Shaman and Priest spells mirror in usage?

[kingcomrade]

I've been playing my priest for about five months now, I've got a lot of experience raiding (my 10 man is on Sindragosa) and I pretty much know how to play a priest. However, I've got a level 74 shaman that I'm rushing up to 80 and I've got some questions about how shamans heal.

First of all, does Lesser Healing Wave and Healing Wave mirror the usage on priests of Flash Heal and Greater Heal? That is, you use the fast one? I'm thinking because of the riptide haste buff HW would be better for tank healing than Greater Heal is for priests, but there's also a glyph for LHW which gives you a big boost to tank healing. There's so many interactions that I'm confused.

This is what I think so far, but the reason I'm here is because I don't have confidence in it. What I'm assuming right now is that the ideal "rotation" for a shaman raid healer is to riptide as soon as its off cooldown, use lesser healing wave twice to use up your charges and hopefully proc ancestral healing, then chain heal onto your riptide target. By then riptide should be off cooldown (actually I think quite a bit sooner) and you can do it again. Again I'm confused by both riptide and chain heal giving you the haste/crit buff. I'm assuming riptide is like penance or circle of healing, you keep it off cooldown.

[Bashal]

I don't know if what I'm about to tell you is in agreement with official guides, but this is my experience healing for three years on a resto shammy:

* Healing Wave kinda sucks. It's the "I wish I was a holy paladin" spell that chews through your mana and tends to overheal. I do use it, but usually only in conjunction with Nature's Swiftness, making it instant-cast.

* Lesser healing wave is my main staple healing spell for a single target, or targets that are too far apart for a chain heal. I use the glyph that improves LHW on targets with earth shield on them.

* Riptide is good when you need to get a quick heal off on someone and you don't have NS + HW available. It's also good to use in a rotation with LHW to get lots of crits.

* Chain heal is ridiculously OP now if there's more than one person taking damage and are fairly close to eachother. Just pick the person with the lowest health as your primary target for the chain heal.

I tend not to do too much "rotation" stuff though. I just use the tool that seems to suit the situation. I find I don't use the "increased healing" part of riptide much, since in raids I usually use it to quickly throw an off-heal on someone.

[Ralynn]

I wish I could link you to my guilds website and the write up I've done. This is likely more than you were looking for but short answer is yes it sounds like it at least until in ICC gear then debatable with people starting to split.

Shaman healing summary:

Shamans are best as raid healers. As raid healers haste is crack... get it. Make sure mana can support it and that heals are strong enough to be effective, but haste is 2-3x better for shamans healing over any other stat. Through put should be taken care of by gear, but will be a bit rough first hitting 80 until gear is rounded.

Earth Shield on tank or key person taking consistent damage, chain heal on raid. Riptide for spot heals. For fights that require single target healing, use lesser healing wave until ICC content and gear. Even then I still use lesser healing wave but with haste what it is, HW becomes more viable and there are shamans healers that start to use it a lot more. I still like the faster heals personally but i'm starting to move over to HW a little more.

Crit regens mana, so don't be afraid to drop mp5 for it. I actually wish all my gear was all crit instead of mp5.

Glyph earth shield
Glyph Chain at 80 for raids else lesser healing wave pre 80 or not raiding.
Early 80 glyph water shield because you'll need mana
Mid 80's glyph lesser healing wave
Late 80's (icc geared) possibly healing wave as you find haste making it more viable and mana regen can support it.

Trinkets:
Best trinkets pre totc solace are in HOS heroic: Spark of Life
Naxx Saph Soul of the Dead (I think)
The heroic trinket egg of immortal essence is FAR better than the triumph int trinket and if you aren't having mana issues I'd take it over the soul of the dead but keep all three around as needs change.
Embrace of the spider is almost the same thing but works for non-healing spells as well. Very nice trinket as well. I'd rate it higher except that the other two trinkets I mentioned scale due to a higher proc rate and provide a huge mp5 amount that scales with haste. Soul of dead is almost a solid 100mp5 with my haste levels now. Without solace I can't maintain my haste without it.
Solace from TOTC and TOGC is godly mana regen... get it. Dbl solace is prefered trinket gearing for shamans in mana intense fights. The healing trinket in ICC is nice if you can afford swapping out a solace for fights.

Meta gem should be int and chance of mana to support haste.

Stack haste...
stack haste...
stack haste...
forget gemming bonus unless it's 9 sp and/or meta gem requirement and...
stack haste.

[kingcomrade]

Playing another healing class really makes you appreciate your own. I am starting to think priests beat shammies at most everything, tank or raid. I feel like the only thing I've got as a shammy that a priest does not is a fast Greater Heal on demand. Especially since all those slots I stick spellpower in as a priest have to be bound down with haste.

[Maèl]

I also find Shammies amazingly similiar to priests. They have a comparable versatility. Any job that can be done by a holy priest(which is about anything) can also be done by a shaman.
But the same is also true for a druid.

[Airowird]

Almost any healer can do almost anything.
I know some pretty good Disc raid healers & trees that can tank heal, heck even a good holy paladin isn't that crap at raid healing.
It's not about what spells you have, it's about how you use them.

[Maèl]

I am a disc priest and most of the time I am raid healing because the other healer is a pally.
The only thing that really hurts disc priests is the mechanics of Grace. Quite often I have found myself wondering if it really was worth the talent points.
...and then *BAM* I'm back on tank healing on Festergut25 because I'm the guy who prevents the instant tank gibbs.

[Bashal]

...I am starting to think priests beat shammies at most everything,

From TankSpot's Posting & Chat Rules

There are recurring themes that pop up and never do well:

• Class comparisons rarely go anywhere but downhill and are almost certainly going to just get closed.

Just a reminder.

[Kindralas]

The basics of the Shaman are haste and Chain Heal. You literally want nothing but items with haste, and all but meta requirements in your gem slots should be haste. Because Shamans have very few non-casted heals, and because Chain Heal casts so abysmally slow, haste is by far the best Shaman stat, without any doubt. If you can work it, every item slot should be a Spellpower/Haste/Crit Rating item, and almost every socket should be a Quick.

After that, a lot of things you do are dependent on play style. I think most Shamans work almost exclusively off LHW and CH, which is fine, but I find it's a bit short-sighted. My healing spread tends to be almost even between LHW, HW, and CH, with Riptide and ES getting almost equivalent healing. The thing about HW is that it has that horribly low cast time, but not with Tidal Waves. And considering you're CH'ing and Riptiding constantly, you should pretty much always have Tidal Waves up, so it becomes a much, much better option. It is not your spam ability. If you're looking to keep a tank up, your best option is actually not to spam a single spell, but to weave a rotation. Usually, I end up doing Riptide, HW, HW, CH, HW, HW repeat. That's not Riptiding on cooldown, because Riptide's healing is pointless. It's Riptiding as a quick means of refreshing Tidal Waves, and since it's never up after two HW's (with Riptide, my HW is casting at 1.06s), I weave in a CH, which also uses the Riptide buff.

Using LHW for Tidal Waves charges isn't really terribly useful, because LHW's crit is so high to begin with. Yes, Tidal Waves pretty much guarantees your next two LHW's will crit, but your HW will heal for approximately as much as a crit LHW, even glyphed, and will cast as fast as LHW with Tidal Waves up, and could possibly pop off a crit and fill your target, not to mention the AA proc off of a crit HW is actually useful, whereas off of LHW, it's not.

That's not me saying that LHW is terrible, it isn't, but don't discount HW. Shaman healing is all about using every tool at your disposal. Make sure you get something that lets you monitor how many charges are left on your Earth Shield, and make sure you refresh it every time it drops. Use the right heal for the job. Don't discount HW because it overheals. If it's overhealing wildly, you're using it wrong, because you shouldn't be using it on targets who are down 10K health. It's an emergency heal.

Glyphwise, I've soured on LHW, because it's just not that useful. Especially in 10-mans, your most likely role will involve raid healing with some tank focus, which means your best option for rotations is to go through two or three Chain Heals, and then top off the tank, dropping the raid focus if the tank takes a huge hit. Since your Tidal Waves is almost always up, you're likely to just turn and drop a big HW, and go back to your job. Basically, you're letting the other healers focus on getting the little maintenance heals on the tank, with you there as a backup big heal when necessary. The LHW glyph shines most in situations where you will have to spam heal the tank with other healers, a situation that rarely happens in 10-man (Festergut after some inhales is about the only thing I can think of).

Glyph of CH is also not as good as it appears. Everyone thinks that fourth bounce means a lot, but it just doesn't. If you assume that your initial Chain Heal is healing for about 8K, the second bounce will heal for 4.8K, the third will heal for 2.9K, the fourth for 1.7K. That fourth bounce just isn't that great. Add to that the fact that, in 10-mans, especially if you're light on melee, you're not going to get the fourth bounce that often, and you come up with a kind of ho-hum glyph. In 25, it can be terrific, since you'll get that fourth bounce most of the time, but in 10's, it's just not a game breaker.

Ultimately, probably your best options for glyphs in 10-man are Water Mastery, Earth Shield, and then rotating LHW, CH, HST, or Mana Tide, depending on your situation. If you find you raid with another Shaman or BoW a lot, then HST is very solid. The glyph is generally going to account for about 40 HPS by itself, and it's completely passive, and incredibly cheap. It's not going to rock anyone's world, but it's about on par with LHW and CH for healing, again, depending on the situation and your particular healing strategy.

The reasoning behind Mana Tide is somewhat personal. Everyone will tell you that healers don't care about their mana. It's kind of funny, to me, because I manage my mana very closely. Shamans have the worst mana problems of the five different healers, but most Shamans use a strategy which minimizes that, snipe healing and the like. I don't do that. My philosophy is that if I'm not burning Mana Tide and using potions, then that mana is just as wasted as it would be overhealing. The difference is that if I cast a heal for pure overheal, I have a chance of landing a heal that's necessary, mana not used is simply wasted. With that philosophy, Glyph of Mana Tide helps, especially if you have a couple of Arcane Mages around.

So there's a lot more to it than you think. I tell most starting Shaman healers to begin as a Chain Heal spambot, because it's our most efficient heal, it's still a solid single-target option, and because you can often make mistakes using our single target options, which aren't spectacular, that work out okay if you get Chain Heal bounces instead. Once you get used to fights and the rhythms of healing as a Shaman, you start weaving in our other options. Your best Shamans will end up, overall, with similar amounts of healing from each of our three main heals, but because of Tidal Waves, it's not a simple matter of choosing the right heal for a fight, but the right heal for a situation, and that has to be muscle memory, and it really can't be taught.

A lot of this post is kind of devil's advocate, because a lot of the beliefs about Shaman healing out there are kind of weighted wrong. Yes, overall, a lot of the things said in this thread are true, but they're not always true. You can't simply say something like "Healing Wave kinda sucks," because there are situations that happen frequently where Healing Wave is pretty awesome. Someone coming out of an Ice Tomb on Sindragosa is a perfect example. If you time that right, they pop out and immediately catch a 15-20K heal and are ready to go, and you've only wasted one GCD. I'm not pointing out the flaws in things to disagree, necessarily, just to point out that there's more to each of these decisions than a cut and dry "good or bad" concept.

[kingcomrade]

After getting a lot more experience with my Shaman, I'm finding them to be relatively simple. The spells I use in general are Healing Wave, Riptide, and Chain Heal. My haste buff is up almost 100% of the time so I don't see any reason beyond mana efficiency to use lesser healing wave. I've also found that compared to priests my shaman's heals hit a lot harder, so it's more about getting more of them out than it is making them more powerful, so yes haste is king. I understand that before 3.3 shaman did not use healing wave, but I came into shaman healing after the patch and found that lesser healing wave just doesn't do what healing wave can in just a slightly longer time.

I do believe that the chain heal glyph is important, though. 1.7k boost to overall healing, to me, is rather a big boost in power. That's 1.7k extra you get every single time you cast, on a new target. Right now I'm using earth shield, healing totem, and chain heal glyphs. I think I'm going to replace the earth shield glyph with earthliving weapon glyph.

[KnThrak]

Glyph of CH is also not as good as it appears. Everyone thinks that fourth bounce means a lot, but it just doesn't. If you assume that your initial Chain Heal is healing for about 8K, the second bounce will heal for 4.8K, the third will heal for 2.9K, the fourth for 1.7K. That fourth bounce just isn't that great. Add to that the fact that, in 10-mans, especially if you're light on melee, you're not going to get the fourth bounce that often, and you come up with a kind of ho-hum glyph. In 25, it can be terrific, since you'll get that fourth bounce most of the time, but in 10's, it's just not a game breaker.

For 10man you are right, it's wasted 90% of the time.
For 25man you are in turn underestimating the pretty noticeable +33% chance for an earthliving proc per Chain Heal. That's another 1200 or so healing, averaged out over all casts. Much stronger than Earthliving's own glyph actually. Still you are right, people overestimate the glyph and I run fine without it (seeing how I heal both 10 and 25, I never bothered). But the ELW-part is the interesting one, now the straight healing of the fourth bounce. Moar hots!



I'd go by this general rule:

• In any and all setups: Glyph of Earth Shield, it's just that powerful. It's also never wrong, can be utilized while moving, can save someone when the healers are disabled, virtually never overheals and is versatile enough to be used on a Priest Healer at Lanathel25 if the tanks are covered.
• Are you usually assigned to a tank?
  Then you need either Glyph of Healing Wave or Glyph of Lesser Healing Wave. Which one is personal preference, I'd advise you to run both for a few raids and see which spell works better as your go-to MT healer spell.
  That being said if you're always a tankhealer, consider getting both. Good tankhealing uses both LHW and HW in good proportions, instead of just spamming one spell. If you're serious about tankhealing, both can save a tank's life. The first because you don't have to move out of the fire immediately, the second because it just heals for more.
• Are you usually assigned to the raid?
  Then you want to pick 2 out of these 3: Glyph of Chain Heal (25man only!), Glyph of Healing Stream Totem, Glyph of Earthliving Weapon (yeah it's bugfixed!).

In either case, the second glyph (for 25man raidhealing the first one is GoCH, for 10man raidhealing I'd consider GoELW the first one) can be switched to Water Mastery or Mana Tide Totem as necessary for mana. Keep in mind Mana Tide Totem is ~twice as strong as Water Mastery assuming everyone in the group uses the mana.

Also, don't forget to experiment. Ultimately all healing glyphs of the shaman are useful to various degrees depending on your raidsetup. If your 25man always has 3+ Resto Shamans, you could even consider dropping Glyph of Earth Shield which is the one glyph one would normally consider must-have.

The other glyphs are a lot of personal experimentation, I'm currently running HW + ES + ELW. Used to have HST instead of ELW, testing the bugfixed one now. It seems to be somewhere around 100-160 HPS over a fight, more importantly I only lose a minimal amount of possible procs to Earthliving Execute, from parses. I had thought with the autoprocs the glyph would be largely useless but it seems to work ok-ish. But we got a lot of BoW sources so we're always running Healing Stream Totems, so I may just go back to that. ^_^

[Mmiz]

Ok so a lot have been said here most makes sense what people are not considering is tier bonuses and totems. (I know this isn't a issue pree 80 but ones you get icc gear you start having 2 sett and even 4 sett t10 bonuses that changes things around) not to speak about totems there are basically 3 totems to chose from the 245 badge one is pretty nice for a ch spamming raid healer, butt then the 264 badge one is slightly better even if it means you need to use riptide more to keep it up. Last if you ever tank heal getting one of the arena totems is pro as those buffs you're lhw.

note that the 4sett t10 makes ch glyph even better in 25 man when I chain spam with that and having trauma + riptide cd my screen looks like a druids screen.

Personally I always find myself filling in where its needed. Having to switch around a lot from tank healing, raid healing, special assignments and sometimes juggling 2-3 of them.
Doing this I ended up keeping my haste around 1k'ish (not to far from lhw cap with t10 2sett) I use the 264 totem unless I'm spesificaly only tank healing then I use my arena totem.
I have lhw ch and es glyphed, when I know I'm raid healing a bunched up raid that takes "constant" ticks I switch out lhw glyph for healingstream.

Over the last month we had some serius discussion amongst our shammys in the guild about takking pushback or not. My opinion on this is its worth having pushback tallents unless you newer do festergutt and always ch spam raidheal..... the loss of hps is minimal and instead you land that lhw or 2sett hasted hw in time instead of 0.1s to late due to push back (other player is dead).

note:
Another observation I have is that a lot of ppl watch meters to much and putt to much into them without knowing how to read them: When I look at meters I look at healing done, over healing done, then I look at how the mana was managed, and last butt not least deaths.
We took on a new shammy last week he joined the raid wanting to prove him self obviously(farm night)
In the end of the night he had managed to oom 1/2 way true on every boss fight. Trying to push out hps when not needed (spamming ch). It ended up with me doing 3x as much healing and 8% over healing, and him doing 40% yeah he beat me on raw hps. But why even bother about it? put out the needed hps at the needed time.


EDIT:
HW Glyph is a waste even using hw on most fights only tie I use it is on dreamwalker in case I'm out of range of raid healers coming out and in of portals. (and most days I do not even bother using it then I'll just riptide myself if its to bad)
I'd get healing stream before I get HW glyph (ofc depending on you're raid setup but chances are you have enough pally's for a wisdom)
butt normaly I'll just run with lhw, ch, es glyphs as I do not have to manage my glyph's on every boss.

[Eisen]

Playing another healing class really makes you appreciate your own. I am starting to think priests beat shammies at most everything, tank or raid. I feel like the only thing I've got as a shammy that a priest does not is a fast Greater Heal on demand. Especially since all those slots I stick spellpower in as a priest have to be bound down with haste.

Depends on how you look at it, Here's where a shaman shines:

A holy priest is a healer. Plain and simple. ALL he can do is heal. My Shaman, however? Can heal nearly as wel, better in some circumstances, and has a ridicio-stupid swiss army knife of useful toys

1) More Elemental resistances via totems (and all 3 can be up if needed)
2) Fire and forget raid healing via Healing Stream
3) Superior mana regen your yourself and all casters via Mana Stream and Mana Tide
4) An impressive armor buff through Stoneskin
5) Melee DPS buff through SoE totem
6) Caster healer/DPS buff through Flametongue
7) Aoe fear/sleep/charm break with Tremor Totem
8) Self-rez in combat
9) Higher armor values=better survivability
10) Heroism
11) Elementals to bolster DPS in those 1% situations
12) Fire-and-forget single target heals in Earth Shield.

Shamen are hands-down the most versatile healer class; they lack the on-the-run healing of the druid or the OMGHPS of the Pallie, but make up for it by being far more adaptable.

[kingcomrade]

I don't agree at all, priests are more versatile. The whole reason I posted what I posted is that shaman only have 3 healing spells (one aoe, one instant, one direct (two direct, but I never use LHW due to the tidal haste buff)) that they use directly. Priests have more tools, especially for raid healing. I was saying in my later post that shaman make up for it simply by having more raw power in the form of procs and a fast greater heal.

[Airowird]

LHW
HW
CH
Riptide
ES
HST

That's already twice the heals you use.
Sure, Priests have slightly more spells, but that doesn't make them more versatile by default

PS: not using LHW unless you're doing ICC progression is a bad idea imo.

[KnThrak]

I don't agree at all, priests are more versatile. The whole reason I posted what I posted is that shaman only have 3 healing spells (one aoe, one instant, one direct (two direct, but I never use LHW due to the tidal haste buff)) that they use directly. Priests have more tools, especially for raid healing. I was saying in my later post that shaman make up for it simply by having more raw power in the form of procs and a fast greater heal.

Assuming you're not just a full-raid Shammy at times sniping a target with a hasted HW, you misunderstand the TW-LHW proc.

You use LHW when the tankdamage is low but random damage is high. You use HW when tankdamage is extremely high and you need to recover quickly, mana be damned.
A prime example here is Festergut. At 0 stacks I heal with CH over the tank, at 1 stacks / 2 stacks I start switching to full LHW and reap the AA procs into the raid, at 3 stacks it's all RT -> HW -> HW -> CH -> HW -> HW for maximum haste-speed and output, ignoring actual damage and mana.

This applies to all fights though. When tankdamage goes higher, hasted HW, when it goes lower, critting LHW to help with raid, or CH to get more TW procs and heal the melee alongside the tank. It's the reason I said above that for a tankhealer, having both HW- and LHW-glyphs can actually be highly useful.

[KnThrak]

I don't agree at all, priests are more versatile. The whole reason I posted what I posted is that shaman only have 3 healing spells (one aoe, one instant, one direct (two direct, but I never use LHW due to the tidal haste buff)) that they use directly. Priests have more tools, especially for raid healing. I was saying in my later post that shaman make up for it simply by having more raw power in the form of procs and a fast greater heal.

Assuming you're not just a full-raid Shammy at times sniping a target with a hasted HW, you misunderstand the TW-LHW proc.

You use LHW when the tankdamage is low but random damage is high. You use HW when tankdamage is extremely high and you need to recover quickly, mana be damned.
A prime example here is Festergut. At 0 stacks I heal with CH over the tank, at 1 stacks / 2 stacks I start switching to full LHW and reap the AA procs into the raid, at 3 stacks it's all RT -> HW -> HW -> CH -> HW -> HW for maximum haste-speed and output, ignoring actual damage and mana.

This applies to all fights though. When tankdamage goes higher, hasted HW, when it goes lower, critting LHW to help with raid, or CH to get more TW procs and heal the melee alongside the tank. It's the reason I said above that for a tankhealer, having both HW- and LHW-glyphs can actually be highly useful.

[kingcomrade]

That's already twice the heals you use.

Sorry, I'm not interested. Most shaman spells do the same thing. Priest spells have a lot of variety in casting times, number of targets, strength, and use. When I'm healing as a holy priest, I use circle, renew, flash heal, mending, binding, and prayer of healing on a regular basis. All of those spells vary in number of targets and casting speed. With shamans you can heal one person or you can heal three or four people. I'm not bashing the class so there's no reason to get defensive. It's just chain heal does the job that circle and mending and poh do simply by healing for big numbers while the priest spells hit for smaller numbers but faster casts or more targets. That's why priests are more versatile, if you're not going full throttle there's a lot more options in what type of heal you want to use. With a shaman you're either going to hit one target with your favorite single target spell or you are going to chain heal.

Assuming you're not just a full-raid Shammy at times sniping a target with a hasted HW, you misunderstand the TW-LHW proc.

Don't tell me what I misunderstand. Crit causes ancestral healing and pops a water orb. Since chain heal is going to heal for more on several more targets, and healing wave is going to heal for more on a single target (and can still crit), LHW is for mana efficiency. I use LHW when someone needs to be healed 5k and hitting them for 10k would be a waste of mana. Trying to metagame it past that is wasting your time.

[Mmiz]

time to close thread imo

[Krenian]

Try to steer clear of the whole "My class is better than yours" discussion, guys. Both Priests and Shaman have their utilities when it comes to healing and it's to utilize the tools you have in your arsenal that make you a great healer, not what class you are.

You may have some preference in the method you heal, but effectively, all classes that have a heal tree, can heal. Leave it at that.