Holy Lag Batman!
Welp I must apologize for being so long since I blogged last. It's been a pretty intense raiding experience the last few weeks with raiding 25-man content 3 nights a week and then doing 10-man content another 3 days a week, its just flat out been busy.
Our ten man instances have been pretty smooth well except for the Lag.
our twenty five man instances have been pretty smooth well except for the..you guessed it Lag.
Blizzards pretty much taking the status quid pro quo on the current raid lag but the majority of raiders have some theories.
It appears that certain script heavy encounters like four horsemen and Thaddius in 25 mans especially are huge lag whores. Our 25- man team has been stuck on Thaddius for two weeks now because every time we get into attempt him we experience 3-5 second lag time on all spells and abilities and even on debuffs so we end up wiping each other out with the stupid mech like game mechanics.
Consensus is that this lag is server side, since many guilds have been trying these bosses without any add ons without any improvement in performance.
With so many complaining about the watered down content one must wonder when will it be the last straw for the most dedicated of raiders?
Okay well I obviously at this point have not healed through this fight with mini-bosses up when I do, I will include details about that.
For this fight you generally are going to have 2 tanks. Neither tank takes a whole hell of a lot of damage if everything goes right but its quite possible to have some good burst damage if one or both tanks get's hit by the lava wall which should never happen but can.
We've generally ran this instance with 3 healers in 10 man and we had 7-8 on 25 man.
We assigned 1 healer to the MT and 1 to the OT for 10 man, with the third healer playing raid healer + backup tank healers. This fight can really call for some good old fashion cross healing, so don't let your healers get tunnel vision. Being that the instance is tuned down for ten man there can be times when the ae damage can be quite a bit to keep up with, with two tanks taking damage and only 1 raid healer.
With 25 man we assigned 1 priest and 1 paladin to each tank and a druid to hot them both up. The remaining healers raid healed. I do have to say the number of healers we brought to the 25 man without any mini-bosses up was overkill.
As far as trash is concerned its far more challenging to heal the trash in 10 man than 25 man. It doesn't seem to me that more orbs spawn from casters in 25 man so with more healers and more possible targets it wasnt very hard to keep everyone alive from the stacking beams.
Other then that I can't think of anything else important to mention except that for positioning during the boss fight. Id recommend positioning yourself half way between the two holes in the waves. That way you never have further to run one way or the other. Though by staying in the hole form the right wall, you dont have to move when the right walls spawn. Its a matter of flavor I guess, but its a choice between always having to stop healing and move a little, or every few walls or sometimes all of them having to stop for a longer time to move further.
For this fight you generally are going to have 2 tanks. Neither tank takes a whole hell of a lot of damage if everything goes right but its quite possible to have some good burst damage if one or both tanks get's hit by the lava wall which should never happen but can.
We've generally ran this instance with 3 healers in 10 man and we had 7-8 on 25 man.
We assigned 1 healer to the MT and 1 to the OT for 10 man, with the third healer playing raid healer + backup tank healers. This fight can really call for some good old fashion cross healing, so don't let your healers get tunnel vision. Being that the instance is tuned down for ten man there can be times when the ae damage can be quite a bit to keep up with, with two tanks taking damage and only 1 raid healer.
With 25 man we assigned 1 priest and 1 paladin to each tank and a druid to hot them both up. The remaining healers raid healed. I do have to say the number of healers we brought to the 25 man without any mini-bosses up was overkill.
As far as trash is concerned its far more challenging to heal the trash in 10 man than 25 man. It doesn't seem to me that more orbs spawn from casters in 25 man so with more healers and more possible targets it wasnt very hard to keep everyone alive from the stacking beams.
Other then that I can't think of anything else important to mention except that for positioning during the boss fight. Id recommend positioning yourself half way between the two holes in the waves. That way you never have further to run one way or the other. Though by staying in the hole form the right wall, you dont have to move when the right walls spawn. Its a matter of flavor I guess, but its a choice between always having to stop healing and move a little, or every few walls or sometimes all of them having to stop for a longer time to move further.
I have started to write this post several times this past week and in fairness waited to write this until after last nights 25-man raid for our guild. It was our first time coming together since Burning Crusades and we had alot of new faces as well as probably 30% of our players playing new mains, at least for our raiding scene.
First off getting into raiding in WotLK is quickly becoming a joke and something that blizzard better have an answer for with the release of 3.1 patch.
For the most part the large majority of our raid last night had never been inside Naxx in the past so had no idea what to expect. Roughly 10 of our 24 raiders we took have cleared non-heroic Naxx already. On their second week of raiding Naxx I might add.
We started our second ten man team which I was part of this past Tuesday. We didn't even get to try a boss tuesday because once we cleared the minibosses around Saltharion the zone locked up and we had to wait two hours for a GM to come log us out of the game and port us out of the zone. Those of us whom DCed manually were never able to log back into those toons until the GM kicked them out of the sanctum.
Anyways day 2 we went back with a full 10 man. We had Warrior and Feral Druid tanks. Holy Priest, Resto Shaman, and Holy Paladin Healing. Elemental Shaman, Demo Warlock, Boomkin, Death Knight, and I can't remember what the other DPS was. Anyways...
We killed Satharion on our very first attempt ever for the group. This boss with all the mini-bosses down is cake. I am anxious to see how it goes with some up.
We flew over to the Naxx and we cleared the Spider Wing and up to including Gothik the Harvester in the Military Wing. We had a few wipes from getting usted to the strats but all and all there wasn't any real difficult challenge or gear check.
I can say this with confidence because 1 tank and all 3 healers for sure are fresh level 80s. I was barely breaking 1300 healing buffed on my shaman and the holy priest wasn't doing much better. We did have some great caster synergy going however.
I don't have any meters from that night to see how I did with my gear but I never had problems with my own perosnal assignment. The only real challenge for me was on Gothik where I was left to heal the Human side by myself while the other two healers healed dead side. I did get some help from the boomkin at one point but other then that the average damage was healable.
So onto our 25-man experience last night.
Blizzard what the hell is your problem?! I mean seriously - the trash was an utter joke. It felt like the trash was there for nothing other than a time sink and warlock soul shards. I never raided 40 man naxx but I will say that several folks in our guild who had kept commenting on how sad the trash made them feel. That it was rediculously easy compared to 40-man Naxx.
Now I can understand that this is an entry level dungeon so it should be easier than folks remember but do you remember Blizzards comments about not just waltzing through AEing trash?
Well with only a week of 10 man Naxx really under half our raiders belt we were AE pulling two sometimes three packs of trash at a time. It was that easy. In dungeon blues and quest rewards. The only time we had problems with this method was the trash in front of Grand Widow Faerlina. We pulled the last 3 packs at once and the entire raid just fell dead to a huge wall of purple shadowbolts as each of the casters did a shadow bolt volley sorta deal it was actually rather ammusing.
All in all it was a easy but fun night.
I managed to squeeze by as 4th out of 8 healers. The difference in EffHealing between me and #3 was less than .1% of healing done. The top two healers are from the group that has cleared naxx twice already in ten man and have been running heroics for two weeks already and their gear far surpasses the rest of ours by a long shot. They each did about twice as much effective healing as myself and the #3 healer. That just goes to show you that how quickly your gear jumps in quality from heroic drops and badge gear.
Welp I was going to include some healing breakdowns in here but this has gone rather long and I will make that it's own post!
First off getting into raiding in WotLK is quickly becoming a joke and something that blizzard better have an answer for with the release of 3.1 patch.
For the most part the large majority of our raid last night had never been inside Naxx in the past so had no idea what to expect. Roughly 10 of our 24 raiders we took have cleared non-heroic Naxx already. On their second week of raiding Naxx I might add.
We started our second ten man team which I was part of this past Tuesday. We didn't even get to try a boss tuesday because once we cleared the minibosses around Saltharion the zone locked up and we had to wait two hours for a GM to come log us out of the game and port us out of the zone. Those of us whom DCed manually were never able to log back into those toons until the GM kicked them out of the sanctum.
Anyways day 2 we went back with a full 10 man. We had Warrior and Feral Druid tanks. Holy Priest, Resto Shaman, and Holy Paladin Healing. Elemental Shaman, Demo Warlock, Boomkin, Death Knight, and I can't remember what the other DPS was. Anyways...
We killed Satharion on our very first attempt ever for the group. This boss with all the mini-bosses down is cake. I am anxious to see how it goes with some up.
We flew over to the Naxx and we cleared the Spider Wing and up to including Gothik the Harvester in the Military Wing. We had a few wipes from getting usted to the strats but all and all there wasn't any real difficult challenge or gear check.
I can say this with confidence because 1 tank and all 3 healers for sure are fresh level 80s. I was barely breaking 1300 healing buffed on my shaman and the holy priest wasn't doing much better. We did have some great caster synergy going however.
I don't have any meters from that night to see how I did with my gear but I never had problems with my own perosnal assignment. The only real challenge for me was on Gothik where I was left to heal the Human side by myself while the other two healers healed dead side. I did get some help from the boomkin at one point but other then that the average damage was healable.
So onto our 25-man experience last night.
Blizzard what the hell is your problem?! I mean seriously - the trash was an utter joke. It felt like the trash was there for nothing other than a time sink and warlock soul shards. I never raided 40 man naxx but I will say that several folks in our guild who had kept commenting on how sad the trash made them feel. That it was rediculously easy compared to 40-man Naxx.
Now I can understand that this is an entry level dungeon so it should be easier than folks remember but do you remember Blizzards comments about not just waltzing through AEing trash?
Well with only a week of 10 man Naxx really under half our raiders belt we were AE pulling two sometimes three packs of trash at a time. It was that easy. In dungeon blues and quest rewards. The only time we had problems with this method was the trash in front of Grand Widow Faerlina. We pulled the last 3 packs at once and the entire raid just fell dead to a huge wall of purple shadowbolts as each of the casters did a shadow bolt volley sorta deal it was actually rather ammusing.
All in all it was a easy but fun night.
I managed to squeeze by as 4th out of 8 healers. The difference in EffHealing between me and #3 was less than .1% of healing done. The top two healers are from the group that has cleared naxx twice already in ten man and have been running heroics for two weeks already and their gear far surpasses the rest of ours by a long shot. They each did about twice as much effective healing as myself and the #3 healer. That just goes to show you that how quickly your gear jumps in quality from heroic drops and badge gear.
Welp I was going to include some healing breakdowns in here but this has gone rather long and I will make that it's own post!
Here is a link to the lootrank I have been using for heroic and raid gear.
Resto Shaman Raid Gear
I am using the following rating system:
Intellect=4.29
CritRating=1.92
MetaSocket=59.1
Mp5=5.69
HasteRating=3.19
SpellPower=4.29
Which happens to be the exact same rating I am using ingame for Pawn.
Resto Shaman Raid Gear
I am using the following rating system:
Intellect=4.29
CritRating=1.92
MetaSocket=59.1
Mp5=5.69
HasteRating=3.19
SpellPower=4.29
Which happens to be the exact same rating I am using ingame for Pawn.
( Pawn: v1: "*Shaman healing": Intellect=4.29, RedSocket=28.6, CritRating=1.92, MetaSocket=59.1, YellowSocket=20, Mp5=5.69, HasteRating=3.19, BlueSocket=20.3, SpellPower=4.29 )
We'll I am now 78.5 and well on my way to attaining level 80 on my shaman and starting to prepare for raiding. As I wrote last week in my blog entree first impressions of the green resto shaman I was struggling with healing small groups and thought I had sumbled onto something that would make my life easier.
We'll I have had the opportunity to run several instances now with this new mindset and I am ready to report on it.
First off all from an subjective viewpoint I have become extremely comfortable with knowing my limits and continually pushing them on Spinel. As you know if you have been following my blog I have some pretty extensive raid experience healing as all three of the other healing classes already, trying to come up with some form of analogy to translate what I had learned from healing on them to healing on a Shaman has been a rocky road at best.
You see the problem is that for a shaman to be ultimatly successful at healing in small groups where they are the sole healer they really have to know what tools are best for what situatoin. I can say with quiet certainty that the same is not true for Druids and Paladins which are the two classes I have the most intimate knowledge with.
With a Paladin in a 5 man you can get away with 95% flash of light spam and an occassional holy light if the tank gets smashed, I quite literally went all of burning crusade without ever touching my Holy Shock button. While other Paladin's I know love it and use it to top meters, it's rarely useful in a neccessity sort of way, it doesnt do enough healing to be a life saver, its more useful in steal Eff Healing from other healers when you finish up a cast of a FL or HL.
Druids can get away or at least could with keeping life bloom on the tank and tossing out a couple rejuvs once in awhile never touching healing touch or regrowth and often going entire instances without using tranquility.
From my experience with a shaman thus far and I will admit I am no expert here but am speaking from my personal experiences the shaman has to know their bag of tricks and know them well.
Here is what I consider my bag of tricks thus far:
Welp for now that is it. I will try to write in again in a bit once I start hitting heroics.
We'll I have had the opportunity to run several instances now with this new mindset and I am ready to report on it.
First off all from an subjective viewpoint I have become extremely comfortable with knowing my limits and continually pushing them on Spinel. As you know if you have been following my blog I have some pretty extensive raid experience healing as all three of the other healing classes already, trying to come up with some form of analogy to translate what I had learned from healing on them to healing on a Shaman has been a rocky road at best.
You see the problem is that for a shaman to be ultimatly successful at healing in small groups where they are the sole healer they really have to know what tools are best for what situatoin. I can say with quiet certainty that the same is not true for Druids and Paladins which are the two classes I have the most intimate knowledge with.
With a Paladin in a 5 man you can get away with 95% flash of light spam and an occassional holy light if the tank gets smashed, I quite literally went all of burning crusade without ever touching my Holy Shock button. While other Paladin's I know love it and use it to top meters, it's rarely useful in a neccessity sort of way, it doesnt do enough healing to be a life saver, its more useful in steal Eff Healing from other healers when you finish up a cast of a FL or HL.
Druids can get away or at least could with keeping life bloom on the tank and tossing out a couple rejuvs once in awhile never touching healing touch or regrowth and often going entire instances without using tranquility.
From my experience with a shaman thus far and I will admit I am no expert here but am speaking from my personal experiences the shaman has to know their bag of tricks and know them well.
Here is what I consider my bag of tricks thus far:
- Chain Heal instead of Lesser Healing Wave. I am not sure where I read this but once I started using it, it was amazing how much this little tid bit helped me. Essentially unless you need the faster heal that LHW provides Chain Heal is a more mana efficient heal even if it doesn't jump and heals for roughtly the same amout with talents.
- Keep Tidal Wave active at all times. This comes from two key techniques. If your using the tip above you alreay know one the other is simply to utilize riptide to fill the gaps when chain heal is not neccessary. The extra hot is nice on tanks or used to top off a dpser or even yourself.
- No Water Shield equals No Mana. Refresh and refresh often. WS costs ZERO mana there is no excuse for it to be down. Thus refreshing it before it expires is not a waist of mana, only a global cooldown. Keep an eye on your WS charges with a mod like totemtimers and if there is a lull in healing feel free to refresh the water shield, no telling when it'll lapse and your in the middle of a buch of heals. That few seconds without it or few crits without the mana return could be detremental in some mana intensive fights.
- Earth Shield your tank. This to me seems like a no brainer but I have ran whole instances on my protection paladin with a resto shaman without ever seeing an earth shield form them, and I know they had talents in it. This is a huge tool for healing smaller groups it enables you as a shaman to do more than spam heal the tank. A smart heal for around 1k every few attacks is akin in 5mans to about 20% damage reduction of the damage that gets through your tanks mitigation.
- Totems. Create a macro of your standard 4 totem rotation. Totems are part of the class and while they can be annoying on trash knowing what totems are neccessary for efficiency and which are not can be a life saver. For example Mana Stream Totem and Strength of Earth totem when I am with my wife's bear are essential. The mana obviously for me and the SoE for her avoidance and threat to help me have to heal less and conserve mana for faster trash clearing.
Welp for now that is it. I will try to write in again in a bit once I start hitting heroics.
Head
Non-Heroic
None
Heroic
Halls of Lightning (Heroic) - [Helm of the Lightning Halls]
Ahn'Kahet: The Old Kingdom (Heroic) - [Brood Plague Helmet]
Neck
Non-Heroic
The Occulus - [Timeless Beads of Eternos]
Halls of Lightning - [Chaotic Spiral Amulet]
Heroic
The Culling of Stratholme (Heroic) - [Necromancer's Amulet]
The Nexus (Heroic) - [Amulet of Dazzling Light]
Shoulders
Non-Heroic
The Culling of Stratholme - [Epaulets of Market Row]
Heroic
Utgarde Pinnacle (Heroic) - [Mantle of Discarded Ways]
The Violet Hold (Heroic) - [Spaulders of the Violet Hold]
Back
Non-Heroic
Utgarde Pinnacle - [Shroud of Resurrection]
Heroic
The Occulus (Heroic) - [Ancient Dragon Spirit Cape]
Gundrak (Heroic) [Cloth] - [Shroud of Moorabi]
Ahn'Kahet: The Old Kingdom (Heroic) - [Subterranean Waterfall Shroud]
Chest
Non-Heroic
The Occulus - [Runic Cage Chestpiece]
Drak'Tharon Keep [BOE] - [Reanimator's Cloak]
Heroic
The Occulus (Heroic) - [Scaled Armor of Drakos]
Gundrak (Heroic) [Cloth] - [Arcane Flame Altar-Garb]
The Violet Hold (Heroic) - [Moragg's Chestguard]
Utgarde Keep (Heroic) - [Dalronn's Jerkin]
Wrist
Non-Heroic
Utgarde Pinnacle - [Dragonflayer Seer's Bindings]
Ahn'Kahet: The Old Kingdom [BOE] - [Glowworm Cavern Bindings]
Heroic
The Occulus (Heroic) - [Bands of the Sky Ring]
Drak'Tharon Keep (Heroic) - [Limb Regeneration Bracers]
The Nexus (Heroic) - [Bands of Channeled Energy]
Hands
Non-Heroic
The Culling of Stratholme - [Gauntlets of Dark Conversion]
Heroic
The Culling of Stratholme (Heroic) - [Cracked Epoch Grasps]
Halls of Stone (Heroic) - [Lightning-Charged Gloves]
Ahn'Kahet: The Old Kingdom (Heroic) - [Fiery Obelisk Handguard]
Waist
Non-Heroic
Halls of Lightning and Halls of Stone [BOE - Cloth] - [Sash of the Hardened Watcher]**
Heroic
Halls of Lightning (Heroic) - [Mail Girdle of the Audient Earth]
Gundrak (Heroic) - [Slad'ran's Coiled Cord]
The Violet Hold (Heroic) - [Girdle of the Ethereal]
Legs
Non-Heroic
Halls of Lightning - [Kilt of Molten Golems]
Heroic
The Culling of Stratholme (Heroic) - [Legguards of Nature's Power]
Halls of Lightning (Heroic) - [Patroller's War-Kilt]
The Nexus (Heroic) - [Frozen Forest Kilt]
Feet
Non-Heroic
Halls of Stone - [Sabatons of the Ages]
Heroic
Rings
Non-Heroic
The Culling of Stratholme - [Enchanted Wire Stitching]
Utgarde Pinnacle - [Signet of Ranulf]
Heroic
The Culling of Stratholme (Heroic) - [Band of Guile]
The Occulus (Heroic) - [Band of Enchanted Growth]
Utgarde Pinnacle (Heroic) - [Ring of the Frenzied Wolvar]
The Violet Hold (Heroic) - [Solitaire of Reflecting Beams]
Drak'Tharon Keep (Heroic) - [Spectral Seal of the Prophe]
Azjol-Nerub (Heroic) - [Ring of the Traitor King]
Utgarde Keep (Heroic) - [Annhylde's Ring]
Trinkets
Non-Heroic
The Culling of Stratholme - [Soul Preserver]
The Occulus - [Tome of Arcane Phenomena]
Heroic
Halls of Lightning (Heroic) - [Winged Talisman]
Halls of Stone (Heroic) - [Spark of Life]
Halls of Stone (Heroic) - [Forge Ember]
Drak'Tharon Keep (Heroic) - [Talisman of Troll Divinity]
Main Hand
Non-Heroic
The Culling of Stratholme - [Beguiling Scepter]
Heroic
The Culling of Stratholme (Heroic) - [Gavel of the Fleshcrafter]
Utgarde Pinnacle (Heroic) - [Netherbreath Spellblade]
The Nexus (Heroic) - [War Mace of Unrequited Love]
Off Hand
Non-Heroic
Utgarde Pinnacle - [Tor's Crestf]
Heroic
Azjol-Nerub (Heroic) - [Facade Shield of Glyphs]
Totems
Non-Heroic
None
Heroic
None
**Only level 80 healer waist avaialble from non-heroic instances.
Crafted Items
(Chest) [Revenant's Breastplate]
(Boots) [Revenant's Treads]
(Feet) [Scaled Icewalkers]***
(Head) [Nightshock Hood]***
(Waist) [Nightshock Girdle]***
(Chest) [Earthpeace Breastplate]***
(Legs) [Dark Nerubian Leggings]***
(Chest) [Dark Nerubian Chestpiece]***
(Main Hand) [Cudgel of Saronite Justice]***
(Main Hand) [Saronite Spellblade]***
*** Not level appropriate for raiding but decent to get you started in heroics to get the good stuff.
Non-Heroic
None
Heroic
Halls of Lightning (Heroic) - [Helm of the Lightning Halls]
Ahn'Kahet: The Old Kingdom (Heroic) - [Brood Plague Helmet]
Neck
Non-Heroic
The Occulus - [Timeless Beads of Eternos]
Halls of Lightning - [Chaotic Spiral Amulet]
Heroic
The Culling of Stratholme (Heroic) - [Necromancer's Amulet]
The Nexus (Heroic) - [Amulet of Dazzling Light]
Shoulders
Non-Heroic
The Culling of Stratholme - [Epaulets of Market Row]
Heroic
Utgarde Pinnacle (Heroic) - [Mantle of Discarded Ways]
The Violet Hold (Heroic) - [Spaulders of the Violet Hold]
Back
Non-Heroic
Utgarde Pinnacle - [Shroud of Resurrection]
Heroic
The Occulus (Heroic) - [Ancient Dragon Spirit Cape]
Gundrak (Heroic) [Cloth] - [Shroud of Moorabi]
Ahn'Kahet: The Old Kingdom (Heroic) - [Subterranean Waterfall Shroud]
Chest
Non-Heroic
The Occulus - [Runic Cage Chestpiece]
Drak'Tharon Keep [BOE] - [Reanimator's Cloak]
Heroic
The Occulus (Heroic) - [Scaled Armor of Drakos]
Gundrak (Heroic) [Cloth] - [Arcane Flame Altar-Garb]
The Violet Hold (Heroic) - [Moragg's Chestguard]
Utgarde Keep (Heroic) - [Dalronn's Jerkin]
Wrist
Non-Heroic
Utgarde Pinnacle - [Dragonflayer Seer's Bindings]
Ahn'Kahet: The Old Kingdom [BOE] - [Glowworm Cavern Bindings]
Heroic
The Occulus (Heroic) - [Bands of the Sky Ring]
Drak'Tharon Keep (Heroic) - [Limb Regeneration Bracers]
The Nexus (Heroic) - [Bands of Channeled Energy]
Hands
Non-Heroic
The Culling of Stratholme - [Gauntlets of Dark Conversion]
Heroic
The Culling of Stratholme (Heroic) - [Cracked Epoch Grasps]
Halls of Stone (Heroic) - [Lightning-Charged Gloves]
Ahn'Kahet: The Old Kingdom (Heroic) - [Fiery Obelisk Handguard]
Waist
Non-Heroic
Halls of Lightning and Halls of Stone [BOE - Cloth] - [Sash of the Hardened Watcher]**
Heroic
Halls of Lightning (Heroic) - [Mail Girdle of the Audient Earth]
Gundrak (Heroic) - [Slad'ran's Coiled Cord]
The Violet Hold (Heroic) - [Girdle of the Ethereal]
Legs
Non-Heroic
Halls of Lightning - [Kilt of Molten Golems]
Heroic
The Culling of Stratholme (Heroic) - [Legguards of Nature's Power]
Halls of Lightning (Heroic) - [Patroller's War-Kilt]
The Nexus (Heroic) - [Frozen Forest Kilt]
Feet
Non-Heroic
Halls of Stone - [Sabatons of the Ages]
Heroic
Rings
Non-Heroic
The Culling of Stratholme - [Enchanted Wire Stitching]
Utgarde Pinnacle - [Signet of Ranulf]
Heroic
The Culling of Stratholme (Heroic) - [Band of Guile]
The Occulus (Heroic) - [Band of Enchanted Growth]
Utgarde Pinnacle (Heroic) - [Ring of the Frenzied Wolvar]
The Violet Hold (Heroic) - [Solitaire of Reflecting Beams]
Drak'Tharon Keep (Heroic) - [Spectral Seal of the Prophe]
Azjol-Nerub (Heroic) - [Ring of the Traitor King]
Utgarde Keep (Heroic) - [Annhylde's Ring]
Trinkets
Non-Heroic
The Culling of Stratholme - [Soul Preserver]
The Occulus - [Tome of Arcane Phenomena]
Heroic
Halls of Lightning (Heroic) - [Winged Talisman]
Halls of Stone (Heroic) - [Spark of Life]
Halls of Stone (Heroic) - [Forge Ember]
Drak'Tharon Keep (Heroic) - [Talisman of Troll Divinity]
Main Hand
Non-Heroic
The Culling of Stratholme - [Beguiling Scepter]
Heroic
The Culling of Stratholme (Heroic) - [Gavel of the Fleshcrafter]
Utgarde Pinnacle (Heroic) - [Netherbreath Spellblade]
The Nexus (Heroic) - [War Mace of Unrequited Love]
Off Hand
Non-Heroic
Utgarde Pinnacle - [Tor's Crestf]
Heroic
Azjol-Nerub (Heroic) - [Facade Shield of Glyphs]
Totems
Non-Heroic
None
Heroic
None
**Only level 80 healer waist avaialble from non-heroic instances.
Crafted Items
(Chest) [Revenant's Breastplate]
(Boots) [Revenant's Treads]
(Feet) [Scaled Icewalkers]***
(Head) [Nightshock Hood]***
(Waist) [Nightshock Girdle]***
(Chest) [Earthpeace Breastplate]***
(Legs) [Dark Nerubian Leggings]***
(Chest) [Dark Nerubian Chestpiece]***
(Main Hand) [Cudgel of Saronite Justice]***
(Main Hand) [Saronite Spellblade]***
*** Not level appropriate for raiding but decent to get you started in heroics to get the good stuff.
First off I am not even remotely close to being an expert at being a resto shaman at this point. I’ve tried digging around and there doesn’t seem to be a whole lot of discussion about healing as a resto shaman. The stuff I can find is raid oriented and seems to revolve around varying themes of binding every key on your keyboard to chain heal and then rolling your face on your keyboard.
Spinel is now level 73 as of last night. My wife is playing her druid Caetlyn which she has speced feral towards tanking.
We’ve ran 3 instances now in northrend. Two runs of The Nexus and one run of Utgard Keep.
First off The Nexus is definatly the more challenging of the two instances both because the bosses seem to be a little more technical in strategies but also because the zone it’s self is not linear. You can get to and complete the bosses inside in pretty much any order you would like. Where as Utgard Keep is definatly a strictly linear dungeon and the only real difficult boss at least from a healers perspective was the last boss and only because both myself and my wife are not in full level 70+ blue/green gear. Neither of our characters were 70 for long before the expansion and whatever we didnt get from questing to 70 we pretty much dont/didnt have going into northrend.
On the very first run into the Nexus we had two Retribution Paladins, Myself, My Wife, and a Warlock. The warlock was in Teir 6 gear while the rest of us were all pretty much lvl 70 pre-raid geared.
We wiped twice the entire run, once due to not being able to keep the group alive on the final boss because people were too spread out and taking tail whips from the boss, the other time was from pulling two groups at once due to a patrol.
The second run we did was the Utgard Keep run which was composed of two mages, another feral druid, my wife and myself. I should point out that the other feral druid and one of the mages are two real close friends we have grouped with on many occasions.
We wiped on this run twice as well. The first time was on the second boss pair that once you kill one of them spawns a shade of themsleves till you kill the other. The shade eat me for lunch the first try and lead to a wipe. The second wipe was on the final boss, where I simply wasn’t able to keep up on the shadow smash damage the two feral druids were taking.
The third instance run was back to the Nexus with a Hunter, Rogue, Death Knight, myself and my wife.
We wiped only once and only because my computer decided to reboot just as my wife pulled the first boss we were attempting. Other than that the whole run went smooth.
Of the three runs for me the third definatly felt the smoothest healing wise.
I had an epiphony while healing the last attempt in Utgard that I tried out in the third run in Nexus that really paid off.
It was the pure synergy of Tidal Wave and Riptide.
Essentially previous to this epiphony I was trying to rely on Chain Heal to keep the tank alive and group topped off. Falling back to Healing Wave only as a neccesity when the tank fell below 70%. Only utilizing RipTide as a last resort and generally only to then utilize it’s Chain Heal Synergy.
In the Utgard Keep run I tried to heal more naturally and just do what made sense from a general healing perspective and that was apply direct healing to the target that needed healing. Only AE healing when it made logical sense. The key to making this work was to ensure that by using riptide every 3rd cast I kept Tidal Wave buff active for the 30% haste buff to my direct heals.
This allowed me to take advantage of a Healing Wave spell that only had a 1.4 second cast time and a Lesser Healing Wave that only had a .9 second cast time. When you consider the burst healing / hot from riptide and couple that with the HPS output from the 30% haste it made it a hell of alot easier to keep the tank and other party members alive.
I am going to keep playing with this mechanic and see how it plays out and will definatly be reporting on my findings at a later date
Spinel is now level 73 as of last night. My wife is playing her druid Caetlyn which she has speced feral towards tanking.
We’ve ran 3 instances now in northrend. Two runs of The Nexus and one run of Utgard Keep.
First off The Nexus is definatly the more challenging of the two instances both because the bosses seem to be a little more technical in strategies but also because the zone it’s self is not linear. You can get to and complete the bosses inside in pretty much any order you would like. Where as Utgard Keep is definatly a strictly linear dungeon and the only real difficult boss at least from a healers perspective was the last boss and only because both myself and my wife are not in full level 70+ blue/green gear. Neither of our characters were 70 for long before the expansion and whatever we didnt get from questing to 70 we pretty much dont/didnt have going into northrend.
On the very first run into the Nexus we had two Retribution Paladins, Myself, My Wife, and a Warlock. The warlock was in Teir 6 gear while the rest of us were all pretty much lvl 70 pre-raid geared.
We wiped twice the entire run, once due to not being able to keep the group alive on the final boss because people were too spread out and taking tail whips from the boss, the other time was from pulling two groups at once due to a patrol.
The second run we did was the Utgard Keep run which was composed of two mages, another feral druid, my wife and myself. I should point out that the other feral druid and one of the mages are two real close friends we have grouped with on many occasions.
We wiped on this run twice as well. The first time was on the second boss pair that once you kill one of them spawns a shade of themsleves till you kill the other. The shade eat me for lunch the first try and lead to a wipe. The second wipe was on the final boss, where I simply wasn’t able to keep up on the shadow smash damage the two feral druids were taking.
The third instance run was back to the Nexus with a Hunter, Rogue, Death Knight, myself and my wife.
We wiped only once and only because my computer decided to reboot just as my wife pulled the first boss we were attempting. Other than that the whole run went smooth.
Of the three runs for me the third definatly felt the smoothest healing wise.
I had an epiphony while healing the last attempt in Utgard that I tried out in the third run in Nexus that really paid off.
It was the pure synergy of Tidal Wave and Riptide.
Essentially previous to this epiphony I was trying to rely on Chain Heal to keep the tank alive and group topped off. Falling back to Healing Wave only as a neccesity when the tank fell below 70%. Only utilizing RipTide as a last resort and generally only to then utilize it’s Chain Heal Synergy.
In the Utgard Keep run I tried to heal more naturally and just do what made sense from a general healing perspective and that was apply direct healing to the target that needed healing. Only AE healing when it made logical sense. The key to making this work was to ensure that by using riptide every 3rd cast I kept Tidal Wave buff active for the 30% haste buff to my direct heals.
This allowed me to take advantage of a Healing Wave spell that only had a 1.4 second cast time and a Lesser Healing Wave that only had a .9 second cast time. When you consider the burst healing / hot from riptide and couple that with the HPS output from the 30% haste it made it a hell of alot easier to keep the tank and other party members alive.
I am going to keep playing with this mechanic and see how it plays out and will definatly be reporting on my findings at a later date