Low Throughput on my healers

[Gotankadin]

Hey Guys,
I have two characters I am working up as healers to add a little bit of variety to my daily grind.
My Shaman Golarin

and my Priest, Blaqsheep.

The problem is, consistently low throughput on my HPS. With my priest, it seems like my heals have gotten slower, and I only put out around 6k HPS. On the Shaman, its about the same throughput. I have been reading guides on TS, and optimizing my gear according to Mr. Robot, but I'm still coming up to the low HPS wall.

On the shaman I start out with the tank taking a Riptide and an earthshield, and keep him healed with regular healing waves, occasionally throwing in a GHW when needed. I also use Healing Rain as much as possible, but the throughput just isn't there. (not saying I haven't been able to do bosses, but most of the time by the skin of my teeth. Not to mention that on some of the ZA/ZG trash pulls I fail horribly.)

On the priest, I start out with a renew and PW:S and then throw down sanctuary (when possible) and heal with regular old heal. Still issues with low throughput and people dying. What am I doing wrong?

Thanks!
Blaq

[Tschus]

I'll reply the priest part. I assume you're doing 5mans, right?
First, the spec. I recommend something like http://www.wowhead.com/talent#bchZfurMRzrkfzoh for 5man.
You'll always be in Chakra: Serenity in 5man dungeons. HW: Sanc is basically useless in 5man content. PW:S is a mana drainer, only use it when emergency. Tank healing: put renew on tank, PoM on CD, spam heal with HW: Serenity when u need extra healing. If the tank got below 70% and heal cant get him back, start weaving some greater heals into the rotation. 2 or 3 ppl taking damage: renew and use heal to refresh it. Gheal is they are dipping really low. Binding heal is useful too when yourself also taking damage. 4+ ppl taking damage, CoH on CD, PoH if the damage is more than 20000.

[Ellóren]

Tschus has covered the priest part of your question beautifully, so I'll try my hand at the shaman bit - although or perhaps because I have a relatively new lvl 85 resto shaman. I run a heck of a lot of Zuls at the moment so I kinda know what you're talking about.

Like Sanctuary, Healing Rain is of limited use in 5-mans, unless you're swimming in mana. You're right with keeping Earth Shield and Riptide up on the tank, and otherwise healing him with Healing Waves (mostly). Don't forget though that you can keep Riptide rolling on up to 3 targets, so that's what I usually do if a dps takes some damage. Have the patience to let the Riptide do its job; if the dps isn't continuously losing health (and they really shouldn't unless they're a really bad player) it'll often be enough to heal them back up. When several people take damage at once and the group isn't too spread out, the odd Chain Heal helps too.

What I LOVE about my shaman, especially compared to my holy priest, is the number of cooldowns I have. And so my main piece of advice is, use your cooldowns! Unleash Elements is great, Spiritwalker's Grace is a life-saver in situations like the eagle (was it eagle? The phase with the moving vortexes) phase of Daakara, and my main, favourite thing ever is Nature's Swiftness. Are you specced into that? If not I highly recommend it. I got this advice from my guild's top healer and boy has it been a life-saver in five mans.

For example: Your tank is losing health and you're channelling a GHW on him. While you're doing this his health drops dangerously low. Your GHW lands, and you pop Nature's Swiftness and another, instant GHW right away. Result: tank is topped up and you can even spare the time to quickly heal up another group member. I use it all the time, it has a relatively short cooldown and is just fantastic, especially in PuGs when people do silly things.

Good luck, and happy healing!

[Airowird]

On the Shaman's talents:
Your Resto tree is too bloated, making you miss out on some other off-spec talents.
Focused Insight is a PvP talent and not that useful for PvE (the time it takes to cast a shock you could've cast a Healing Wave and done the healing that way, similar mana cost & healing done, save 3 talent points that barely do 400 DPS)
I would use those talents to fill out Ancestral Swiftness (less time running = more time to cast!) and start on Acuity.
Perhaps even drop a point in Cleansing Waters to fill Acuity out completely (extra crit = more Resurgence mana + more healing overall, and damage happens on more fights than cleansing is required)
You may also consider Telluric Currents if you like the offensive healer style of Shamans over Acuity. It'll be a >2k mana benefit per cast, which is very nice for downtime in healing or burn phases.

You're currently in your Elemental gear (but still got Enh glyphs!), so can't comment on your gear choices right now.

[Pirika-Draenor]

I can only really comment on your priest. While I also play a shaman, she's not fully leveled and I'm still learning the ropes with her myself.

I suggest reading this post I made a while back: Playing a HolyPriest in 5mans -- It's long.. but it kinda gives you some insight on how I play and most of my other holy priest friends play.

Just looking at your talent tree I can see why it's slow.. you're trying to play a holy priest as a disc priest. There's 0 reason to have talents in PW:S.. it's useless to a holy priest. You're better off having those talents in Darkness or Mental Agility. I also don't see why you have that point in Evangelism. The only thing it does is make your damage spells better.. as a holy priest, you have no penance. O.o The benefit to your healing is 0.

Your glyphs are still kinda pointed to disc. Concentrate on glyphing for holy specific spells when possible.. with the upcoming changes, I can't really suggest 'glyph for this!' without possibly wanting to eat my words later.. but Flash Heal, Renew and Prayer of Healing are probably the best/top three glyphs used on high throughput holy priests. Your other glyphs look pretty solid.. but again, with the upcoming changes to CoH, I can't really say it will remain a good glyph to keep. The third one I glyph for is between the two dispels, (mass and single) depending on what we're currently progressing/working on.

You've made some interesting choices in your gear and reforging.. just remember, spirit to around 2500, then haste to 12.5 (with buffs), then mastery. Even if you can't get yr spirit to 2500ish, just make sure you have int/sta/spi on every piece of gear you're wearing.. and all crit changed to either haste or mastery.. or spirit in the case of a piece of gear lacking it.

[Gotankadin]

OK So I made Spec changes to both the characters. I also made sure to log out in Resto/holy spec and gear.
@Pirika - What do you mean by interesting choices in gear and reforging? I am following Mr. Robot for the reforging. And a couple of the tailor made pieces are what I had available for recipes at the time. Oh and also, what glyphs specifically are you talking about?


Thanks!
-Blaq.

[Aaran]

Just a quick note on holy priesting... Very few priests use the glyph of flash heal. For five mans I would suggest renew, PoH, and Guardian Spirit. Don't be afraid to use Guardian Spirit. Some people get into the mind set that something is "only a 5 man," or "only trash" and that CD's shouldn't be used. I'm heroic Firelands geared and I still use GS in just about every 5 man. For raids I swap GS for lightwell depending on the encounter. Pugs will never be able to use more than 10 charges of a lightwell.

Also, particularly for a 5 man healing priest who will be in Serenity chakra almost all of the time, the 12.5 haste break point is meaningless. You will be refreshing your renew anyway, so you won't gain the heal per mana benefit that the cap would otherwise provide. When/if you do get into raiding, the cap still means very little as haste continues to benefit all of your spells, renew included. There is merit in mastery stacking, particularly for heavy constant aoe fights. The benefit is more related to the improved heal per mana of mastery stacked Prayer of Healing though, and less to do with renew.

[Tschus]

Nice notes from Aaran.

Though what Aaran mentioned is true, I have another thought about the 12.5% haste cap. Personally I prefer to have 12.5% haste with me. It's not the HPM gain, but the extra ticking time. With 12.5% haste a refreshed renew will tick for ~18sec, which makes multi renew refreshing a lot easier.

[Pirika-Draenor]

I agree with Aaron.. GS is the better choice than Flash Heal.. but someone who is playing disc style might find the FH glyph to be an easier transition. I personally never found the GS glyph to benefit me.. I use GS as my 'oh shit!' button and it usually resets in plenty of time.. before the next 'Oh shit!' comes up. :P

@Blaq: MrRobot is telling you how to do things if you're in raid gear. The choices aren't ideal if you're still building up to that. In a LOT of cases, the choices are less than ideal even if you ARE in raid gear. The gear choices tend to be ideal, but the reforging and gemming and such.. not really all that ideal. You need to make the choices that are best for you and your style of play. I keep that extra tick of renew and extra tick of EoL with my haste.. so I'm a big believer in hitting that 12.5.. as Aaron pointed out, if you're mostly doing 5mans, you're not going to need that extra tick quite as much as you would otherwise. The more mastery you have, the more your EoL ticks off for.. so again, i stack up my mastery so that the EoL ticks do just that much more healing. Same as Tschus said.

If you're looking for yr 5mans to be more kickback and easier to heal, you'll need a bit more spirit and haste.. no matter how you look at it. As those things increase, the rest will too.. and soon you'll find healing 5mans to be totally boring. :P

[Tschus]

Afaik EoL doesn't benefit from haste.

I've found that my majority usage of GS is as "oh I'm lazy" button lol
Another great aspect of GS is that you can toss it on tank, totally forget about him and focus on getting the group back up.

[Crittable]

About shamans, if you want pure throughput, spamming the mana conserving heal will never get the throughput that any healer is capable of. Spamming nourish on a druid won't get very high. Spamming heal on a priest won't get very high. Spamming holy light on a paladin won't get very high. Spamming healing wave on a shaman won't get very high. What that does is keep your mana manageable while still providing enough healing to keep a group up in normal situations.

If you get into situations where you need more throughput to keep your group healed, remember your talents and how they coincide with your spells. Tidal waves is mainly what I'm talking about. If you want throughput, Riptide a target on cooldown to keep up your Tidal Waves buff, use Unleash Life on cooldown, and cast Greater Healing Waves to use up your Tidal Waves buff. Spamming healing wave and riptide is good for the majority of the heals that you do but, if you really need that extra throughput to catch up, make heavy use of your Tidal Waves talent and your Unleash Elements.

Don't forget that you can use Chain Heal to also keep up Tidal Waves in AOE situations but you should always try to use Riptide on cooldown.

[Popsicles]

Hey Blaq,

Resto Shaman chiming in here. Some things I will say, as a resto shaman the whole HPS being low isn't something new. A habit of using RT and HW as you bread and butter is a good start. However when you get into raids, sometimes heavier hitting 5mans, you'll have to pass the small heal and just go into a RT GHW GHW "rotation". The only time I use HW anymore is if I know a dps took a small AE tick and is in no rush to get them back up. Don't under value mastery for the shaman. UE+GHW creates that LARGEST heal in the game with the mastery. Also not having the 4pc(T11) or 2pc (T12) regen hurts a little as far as "spammable" mana pool since the regen relies on using RT.

The other point on using HR. In 5mans you won't have to worry about the diminishing returns on the ticks on the heal, but even in 5mans it is a big mana sink. You'll get better return on sticking to RT/GHW/CH because of Resurgence and the possibility of crits/water shield procc. I find the use of HR is very narrow currently, mostly to get Earthliving rolling on the max 8 targets you are allowed to have. If you know you are going to be in a situation, mostly raids, where you are going to use HR pretty much on CD, a specc with focus insights gives big big returns. There are other small tricks such as double dipping on UE. Cast UE, then a GHW then immediately a RT. The cast followed by a instant will double dib the UE buff from the weapon imbuement. Squeezing in LB's for the TC talent if you have time for it. But remember that there are specific talent trees tailored for specific situations. I find myself during raids, porting and respeccing for specific fights.

Back to the whole low HPS discussion. There is a time and place to say "I can drop huge amounts of heals" and other times there isn't. If you know a riptide is enough to get the target back up before anticipated damage comes, then you are doing your job. At the end of the day, if the entire group is alive, you did your job.