you get more chain heals as totemic with hst
also by now hdt got buffed so many times it is very good sustain and with the free chain heal it is even good burst heal
Cloudburst Totem is nice if you track its value and manually use it for a big group wide heal when you need it. It’s not so good when you just let it run out because then it overheals most of the time and you wasted a lot of its value. I personally like Cloudburst a lot but its use is tricky and definetely a bit more advanced. I don’t recommend it when you’re new to Resto Shaman.
I had a look at your talent tree. And you should not copy-paste the Wowhead talent tree. You have to know that the wowhead recomendations are based on what the pros do. Made by pros, for pros. But you dont play at their level, or have their skill (nobody does to be honest). So here are my recomendations:
Get rid of Acid Rain. Your DPS contribution as a healer is negligeble and not important. If you have downtime do Chain Lightnigns and Lava Bursts.
The value of Reactive Warding is not as good. The tanks can heal themselves well enough already. And Water Shield only consumes a “charge” when you are hit at melee (which should never happen).
Improved Earth Living Weapon does not yeild the HPS it advertises. There are MUCH better options if you are running Farseer.
You could even get rid of Master of the Elements. Depending on how often you forget to Lava Burst. You should never forget to put FlameShock on mobs and Lava Burst when you get the proc. If you forget often to do this, get rid of this talent as well.
Here are my suggestions for better performance:
2 points in Ancestral Awakening
1 point in DRE ( Deeply Rooted Elements).
As for the General Tree:
Lightning Lasso is not usefull in M+. It is on “paper” but the thing is that to keep 1 mob in CC you need to stop doing everything else. Healing and/or casting lightnings is more valuable than to sit there CCing 1 out of 20 mobs.
Mana Spring simply does not return enough mana to justify 1 talent point.
Guardians Crugdel also looses value in M+. Because mobs have DR for stuns. Get the other one with a lowerd CD.
Suggestions for the General Tree:
Seasoned Winds is extremly valuable. One of the main benfits of being a RShaman is its OP kick. This simply makes it even better.
Get Totemic Recall. Extremly usefull for Healing Steam or CB totem (whichever you choose, see bellow). Easy to use also. Pop Recall on CD right after droping a totem.
If you play with Healing Stream Totem, Elemental Resistance is VERY good on some dungeons. Check what type of damage mobs do. In some dungeons giving 1 player (or 2 depending on how many totems) a 6% DR is really good.
You did not specify what content you are doing. If Raid or M+.
But here is my cup of tea:
In any form of content, Cloudburst is usefull only when the incoming damage is scripted. So you know WHEN damage will come in and can prepare accordingly.
And then, it comes from the difficulty of the content itself. It is only really usefull in situations in which 1 chain heal or 1 Healing Surge wont be enough to heal through the event.
So TLDR on CB totem : VERY powerfull, IF you know what you are doing.
If you dont, CB totem looses value extreemly quickly against Healing Stream totem. And that is why Mangi is 100% correct when he sais this:
Then, regarding this coment:
Not usefull unless you are doing really challenging content. Because extra 10% HP is only good when with out 10% extra HP you would get 1-shot. Take this in mind.
And if you do challenging content one day, then the party will know to sit on Healing Rain and it’s value goes up.
In m+ I play Farseer with Riptide talents and it works really well, it has good healing and it’s very mana efficient compared to Totemic. Here’s my build https://ibb.co/TBRYcvgL
Cooldowns aside, the gameplay is basically maintain Riptide on everyone, maintain Healing Rain up all the time (and please use Acid Rain talent…), use Unleash Life to proc your ancestors manually and then use Healing Waves for AoE healing with Whispering Waves talent. You can start casting it before the damage comes since it’s a slow cast.
When emergency heals or big single target heals are required you use Healing Surge, and use Healing Stream Totem before big AoE damage is about to come so you don’t have to waste a global. You never use Chain Heal.
In a sense it plays like Disc Priest but with Riptide instead of PW:Shield, it feels much better in my opinion and Riptide is a really powerful button to press, in fact it will be your nº1 healing on the metters.
I’m doing +6s to farm hero gear right now and tbh they are a breeze at ilvl 640. I have like 10% haste, though I’m aiming for crit/vers as usual.
At first I thought going for haste would be better for quicker casts + Riptide HoT but most of the time a Riptide crit is better and Healing Wave is gonna be a long cast anyways, so might as well go for big crits instead + the mana regen from the talent.
Part of why this build is so efficient is because of Mana Tide. When there are high damage phases or player’s mistakes happen, mana drops quickly by spamming Healing Surge, and Mana Tide helps you stay above 70% mana all the time.
I suppose the higher keys you do, the more noticeable that mana regen is going to be.
Here’s what my healing looks like on a +6 Brew I just finished. https://ibb.co/5x63hbpy
With this build, when people make a lot of mistakes Healing Wave tends to go lower on the list, as most people are undergeared and them standing in poop forces me to Healing Surge instead. Also because keys are low the healing requirement is met with Riptide alone most of the time, so no place for Whispering Waves to shine yet.
But other than that, keeping 1 charge of Healing Stride rolling + Healing Rain + Riptide carry all the healing.
If we speak strictly about HPS Chain Heal is still king, the problem is Chain Heal can work for 1 minute and goes OOM while RipWave (I like this name) build can last infinitely.
So far the highest HPS I’ve done is about 2.3m during some big pulls if that’s of your interest.
I still have to try this build in higher keys but from my experience so far there is not a single healing check I had problems with.
But I somehow remain skeptical. Whispering Waves in your breakdown is just 2.5% of your healing. I cant see it replace Chain Heal for AoE checks.
Cant play today, but tomorrow I will screenshot my healing breakdown with my build and we can compare.
I manage my mana with chain heal differently. Because basically my playstile is super similar to yours: Carry most of the healing with Riptide + Healing Surge/Wave and keep Chain heal for the tough AoE healing checks.
And I can do it, because essentially the build is exactly the same to yours. All that changes is 3 talents. Here is my build:
I’ve done a couple higher keys (up to 10) and I changed the build a little bit, this is what I currently use: https://ibb.co/xKbFvBmw
This is how the healing looks like: https://ibb.co/NgxxDLs2 As you can see Healing Wave + Whispering Waves is even higher than Riptide which is surprising.
I basically changed Ancestral Awakening for Wavespeaker’s Blessing (increased Riptide duration) to make it easier to maintain Riptides so that I can spend more time using Healing Wave during damage intake rather than having to refresh Riptide. It made a big difference in total Healing Wave casts.
Then I also changed Mana Tide for Spiritwalker’s Tidal Totem, it was a bit noticeable the loss of mana regen and I dropped to around 50% during high intensity moments but the 3 “free” healing surges really help with panic moments and specially with mobility.
Overall the healing is a bit lower, but it is infinitely more consistent and easy to pull off, I preffer the build with longer Riptide a million times.
That is much better IMO. I will defently try it out.
Yesterday I tried playing, but wiped on 1st boss of Rookery and we could not release for 2h… all my gametime was spent waiting for a ticket…
The only change I would do to your talents is getting rid of Acid Rain and the improved earth shield for Ancestral Awakening.
And I am not a fan of Spiritwalker’s Tidal Totem. I prefer to play CB for the moments you might need those free Healing Surges.
Might as well put it on improved Link. I think that adds more value for 1 talent. IMO. But if you really, really want Acid Rain then take that point off there for Ancestral Awakening.
Yeah sitting at 50% mana while also using mana pot on cd doesn’t sound very good
I recommend that you test the gameplay on the dummies in the tower right above the 5 AoE damage dummies in Dornogal, you have 1 enemy and 4 allied dummies to test which is perfect.
If you want some advice on how to do it just let me know.
It definitely doesn’t hold. Do you know MadskilzzTV? He’s a healer streamer and he plays all healers but basically mains Shaman. He recently uploaded a +10 Workshop and if you watch the POV he has to stop drinking after each pull.
I will try some M+ this week. I usually start slow, I didn’t do PTR, I didn’t watch guides before the patch went live, now I slowly learn the dungeons (it’s the way I enjoy it).
I changed my build a bit, still not convinced about some choices. I was thinking about taking that healing wave route. I see on wowhead builds that advise Totemic Recall, I just never use that in Farseer. I see for Totemic it can be interesting.
I do use Flameshock a lot and Send out Lava Burst procs whenever I can, and since I noticed my mana does go down a bit, I choose Mana Spring. For me Lightning Lasso is a personal favorite, if others don’t use it, fine with me, I use it to delay casts if my interrupt CD is not there yet, or if a mob is close to dying and starts casting.
I ditched Earhtliving, changed to Earthen Wall, to see if that’s any good.
I really don’t like Downpour, nice in theory, in practise so far I haven’t seen a good use.
Was thinking maybe to ditch the 2 talents under Earthen Harmony and go for the Whispering Waves route.
Its one of the few things WoW head is right about. Use totemic recall to get more Healing Stream / CB totems. It is especially usefull if you have Healing Stream.
You can theory craft about recall a ton. But if you want a suggestion, simply press it on CD. You drop Healing Stream then recall instantly and drop another Healing Stream.
Repeat every 2 min. On CD. Dont think about when its best, or hold on to it.
Just dont get used to this. In higher keys you will notice the significant impact of spending time casting a thing that does nothing.
I can already tell you that its not that good. There are SOME specific rot bosses where that might be usefull. But in general it dosent have a great impact.
In order to make that totem usefull, under ideal conditions you want to “use up” its HP before it goes away. Its got a couple of million health. And it removes too little from each attack to actually make it impactfull.
It’s REALLY good in a raid. Because there would be 15 to 20 people standing in it. So that small absorb ammount x 20 people adds up quickly. But in M+ context, there just arent enough people to justify the talent point.
Try it. But you will quickly notice that while it does have an impact in your HPS, its smaller than other alternatives.
Thanks for the tips, I am still changing my build a lot. I am also no fan of Earthliving, but guess I will spec into that.
I think talents on the bottom of the tree should be more impacting, I guess some aren’t. Either way, both are basically chosen to make the connection to the bottom part.
Might be right about Lasso, it’s just a fun talent to use, but I guess in higher stuff it will need to go.
Let me tell you that what you are doing is the best thing you can do.
Trying out new talents and builds allows you to understand how your class works. And eventually, when you do get into higher content and inevitably use the same BiS talents as everyone else, you will know WHY. Unlike many people.
Did my first +9 today, and I guess maybe for that key level, my ilvl is a bit undergeared.
I did notice the difficulty, and will now first work to get a bit more gear/ilvl, since e.g. my pants are still from S1.
Still changing my build a lot, I gave up on acid rain, I’ll add that damage, when I am able to keep people alive with more ease.
I might ditch the shield talent, it’s not not to need to refresh, but not if I better put it into another point.
My damage is mostly from proc’d lava burst, since I also use that for getting Mana back and buffing Healing surges.
When getting KSM, at one point I felt comfortable, but maybe I was a bit too comfortable The +9 went bad, not just my fault (since people didn’t dispel themselves, and Floodgates has a boss with a nasty dispel e.g. ). At one point I lost my comfort, and I started making mistakes, completely missing the bombs on that fight e.g…
So I now started doing Delves, since I require to change my healing pants . It was also bad timing, as in pretty early, should have not started it in the first place.
