Q for experienced healers - mana management

Community General Discussion
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Hey hey,
I am maining a healer (sham sham) for first time this season, currently doing 15-16s. When I DPS such keys with a good healer, they typically ask the tank to drink maybe once per dungeon, if at all, whereas I am doing so approx 3-4 times a dungeon. I’m also using about 2 mana potions a dungeon.
I know I am only learning, but I would like to work towards a level where I don’t need to ask the tank to stop so I can drink quite so often :slight_smile: :slight_smile: I do drink between pulls as much as I can without asking them to wait, but am finding this isn’t enough, espesh if I have no mage cookies :frowning:
I could almost certainly improve on the mana efficiency of my spells. But my question for experienced healers - would you be using more mana potions anyway? (e.g. on CD each time provided you’re at less than 90% mana?) Or do you keep these just for emergencies? Should I be making more use of other healer potions e.g. Icy Veins suggests Potion of Sacrifical Anima but right now I’m still at the stage where if people are taking big damage I start to panic a bit so losing more of my own HP is the last thing I want to do, ha xD
Would really appreciate any help :slight_smile:

*Edit - Incidentally, when I’m DPSing I am mage, so the healer always has cookies, maybe that’s a factor? :stuck_out_tongue:

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I generally dont drink in keys unless we’ve had somthing unplanned happen and i have had to spamheal.

What spells do you use? Do you use your mana tide totem «on cooldown»? I have a wa that reminds me to pop it when i’m below 70% mana and its off cd. If u struggle u can take the anima power that grants mana orbs.

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Comes with practice, next dungeon you run look at over healing at the end. Start there and work on lowering it. All so what kind of damage are you doing? 15-20 range damage is mega important from healers. Faster the packs die, less mana you use. A healer doing 2k damage will speed up the run quite a bit. Again this comes with practice though.

If the dps are doing there job properly amd interupting and controlling mobs. You can get by alot of the dungeon just healing rain and riptiding. Then weaving in plenty of fire/lava bursts. Mana tide totem will go along way too, don’t hold back on it unless something nastys coming up.

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Cheers for replies!

Trying to use mana tide totem on CD but I’ll make a WA to remind me, that’s a good idea. I find myself spamming healing surge quite a bit, which is probably a lot of it. I’d say I spend my riptides on healing wave about 50% of the time, but maybe that proportion should be higher

Damage-wise I’ve varied between 1.6-2.1k overall in my runs this week

Tbh the pug I’ve just run was particularly messy from a pulls/interrupting/dodging perspective, so maybe not the best one to be using as an example, ha

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Using alot of healing surge will drain your mana more. But its not always in your control if the grp takes alot of unnecessary damage. But in general riptides and healing rain should be enough alot of the time. Also remember health bars doesnt need to be at max all the time, let the hots from riptide and healing rain do their job :slight_smile:

U’ll get there with practice for sure, and i get that its better to play it safe and top ppl off in a pug where anything can happen any moment.

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Probably where most of the issues come from. It’s not uncommon for the tank to be above the healer in healing done at the end if the rest of the party are avoiding almost all unnecessary damage and leaving the healer free to spend gcd’s on damage instead.

My limited experience as disc last season more or less was that as long as i don’t have to heal or can heal effeciently in a dungeon then i’m more than fine. The issue is when radiance into schism or using a defensive wasn’t quite enough to get by and i had to spam shadowmend.
Besides mana management you can also look at defensive cd management and probably make a macro or WA telling the party that earthern wall totem is up and running. That and tell them to get in the healing rain or chain heal range if needed.

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TY guys, good to know + very helpful! Will keep practising :smiley:

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Yeah spamming main heals pretty much a no no for any healer right now. It just burns through mana like crazy. Let riptides and the HoTs get people up. Every time you hard cast a heal after riptide most of its just wasted and burning mana. Onviously you have to use it at times, but you’ll get the swing of it. Every healer starting out massively over heals, we’ve all been there!

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I’m fairly sure it is impossible to mainly heal with riptide on higher keys as almost any ability the dps gets, will get them to half HP.

One forced confession in SoA +16? Down to 40% HP. A single stride on the second boss? Even with cd you spam healing wave. Surge if the dps used a def cd. Of course riptide must always be active, but it won’t save the majority.

Most surefire way of conserving mana is simply knowing what how much damage will the dps receive in the next 10-15 seconds. If you pull the Eatherwryms in Soa for example and your dps is not topped you can just riptide them as they will not receive any damage. If you have the hurlers? You better start healing.

Also as a shaman the fearing thorghast boss is your best friend. If you have the 6% mana power you basically cannot run out of mana if you keep up riptide on 3-4 targets.

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be more efficient with your heals and stack up on drinks so you can sit down and get 1-2 tick between pulls instead of going oom and then sitting down for full 20 seconds to regenerate, also pick mana orb power asap if mana is still an issue.

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I healed a 16 halls last night, will have a look at what healing i used when i get online, but i didnt drink once during the key at least. Ofc sometimes u’ll have to top ppl off with more then a riptide, but if u are spamming surges then yes, u’ll have more mana issues.

Edit: Logs shows 40% of my healing was riptide and 17% healing surge.

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Just throw some riptides between all the chain lightnings and you’ll be fine.

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I’m not the best at mana management either (I really need to use mana tide much more often), I “solved” my mana issues by drinking a few ticks often, and using Riptide pretty much on CD. If I still run oom, Potion of Spiritual Clarity is great. It’s a 10-sec channel, but restores more mana than a mana pot, and doesn’t cost health. It does require you to channel, and is only really worth it if you channel the full 10 sec. In many cases, there’s gonna be a decent opportunity to do so, though.

What also helps is anticipating damage, and filling up a large Cloudburst, so when the big damage comes in, you just pop the totem, and do a fairly nice chunk of healing right there. Since you’re Venthyr: you can do a biiig burst healing by placing a Cloudburst totem, doing a Chain Harvest, and then popping the totem a bit later. Chain Harvest feeds a lot of healing into Cloudburst, and does plenty of healing too. And with the Covenant legendary, those riptides will be juicy too. This also costs very little mana, so it’s super efficient when there’s some big damage incoming. Shards, Echelon, Lord Chamberlain, detonation on Devos, SD 3rd boss, just to name a few cases.

Don’t be afraid to use bigger cooldowns like Spirit Link or Healing Stream Totem, either! Those can save you a ton of mana, too!

Other than that, the biggest help of your mana is your party not taking avoidable damage, and interrupting and CCing. That’ll save you a whole lot more than any smart casting ever will.

Looking at a recent run of mine (https://www.warcraftlogs.com/reports/V2ZTYQAKa1bfqwrc#fight=1&type=healing&source=4), my main healing is healing surge, by a significant margin. Healing Rain is nice and all when the group is standing in it, such as the Executor miniboss, or Shards in HoA, but in most of my runs, when I tried to use it more often, it usually turned out to be a waste. I should probably yell at my group to stand in blue, I suppose.

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If you really struggle with mana, just drink in between pulls. If it’s only for 3s, no problem, every bit helps.
Use your stun totem on CD, it mitigates a lot of damage.
As already said, use cloudburst to heal up the group while you keep the tank up.
Also just pop your CDs, unless you know you need them soon. While healing tide is a nice raid CD, in m+ it is just a bit of background heal.

Using healing surge is appropriate in m+, conserving mana is not your main target here as most fights don’t take that long.

Also depends a lot on your group, i guess. Often damage is avoidable, and if you have to heal through a lot of errors you may have to drink or even pop a mana pot.

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I dont think cap totem on cd is good advice.

This week is raging and a peeve of mine is people that stun the crap out of everything on the pull while cds are up and then its all on CD or DR when it’s needed later in the pull.

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Spamming healing surge without really high crit is way to the hell. My GF Is healing 15-17 now, without need to refill mana or use mana pot. She Is sham too. Everytime i look at her manapool, it is full. The key is Riptide and healing rain. With high crit some surge.

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This is for 5 man and LFR and world boss world quest groups not high end raiding, I have all that up

avoid spamming healing surge, build haste up and get used to using healing wave, echo of the elems gives riptide charges-

also do NOT go for cloudburst totem unless you are raiding heroic / mythic, healing stream totem has tow charges with echo of the elements giving 100% uptime

also get a nice conduit - Swirling Currents to boost your 3 basic heals

remember to use healing rain and the occasional chain heal - plenty of cooldowns so USE them when needed and keep looking for an opening for spirit link to save using ascendance or healing tide totem

if mana is approaching 50% then use the mana tide totem…

Earthen Harmony is my preferred legendary as it helps out with tank healing giving me more time to be flexible with spot heals and also note the boost from healing wave, our efficient heal

that’s all I can offer for now - my preferences

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I don’t even think it is that weird to eat some pommegranate 5 times a dungeon. Often you need to burst someones health back into safety, so you need your riptide + surge for a big heal. I sit down a lot for some ticks in between pulls too. I think i burn almost 10 food per dungeon :man_shrugging: But i am not a shaman of course, so the details are different.

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When it is after a massively healing-intensive part or before a harder Tyrannical boss, I sometimes ask to drink, yes, but most of the time, after learning the dungeons I can tell which spots are safer to drink between pulls.

Or, as a night elf I can Shadowmeld near the end of a trash pack that isn’t very dangerous to get a head-start at mana regen.

Some affixes such as Bursting are way worse than others for this, by the way, and Grievous is also bad for mana because it highly favors the normal heals instead of the more mana-efficient HoTs.

In some runs I never have to ask for the group to stop for me to drink, sometimes it can happen 2-3 times. Depends on the group and the affixes.

On harder week such as when we have Grievous or Bursting, I’m not stingy with mana potions, I basically drink the mana potion them whenever the cooldown is ready to save time. They are really cheap after all.

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You are missing the chest enchant that gives +20 Int and +6% Mana. 6% is not much but every little helps.

As others have said, Healing Surge should only be used when you need big/fast heals, otherwise Healing wave is far more mana efficient. Make sure you use Riptide on every cooldown as its the least mana.

Personally, rather than mana potions I use :- https://www.wowhead.com/spell=307095/potion-of-spiritual-clarity

Whilst you do have to take 10 seconds out to drink it, you get more mana back and if you use it when their health is doing okay and you can afford 10 secs it’s worth it and can be done during combat. Sometimes I put my big healing totem down whilst I drink the potion so healing is still going out whilst I am getting mana back :slight_smile:

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