Mocha
Legendary
Hey guys. So I've been looking to build and play powerful healing and / or FC roles to help even out some of the roflstomp games we've had. Priest was fun, except some priests would just go around debuffing people unnecessarily which was ruining my bubbles in combat when we needed them most. It's clear that a lot of priests just bubble spam for the meters.
So I tried out my resto sham which felt very ADHD for me between purging, dispel, keeping totems, Surging, Riptide, Windshearing, and a lot of classes just roll with EF and dot a few things to destroy damage meters. I previously had EF and will have a weapon with it enchanted, however, given the recent buff to R shams, I've found that haste stacking is simply too much fun. When your heals are sub 1 second cast and noncrit for 750 It's quite enjoyable.
Those of you who are playing resto shammy right now, what approach are you taking? Pure haste for healing surges + riptide? Versatility for increased heals? Some spirit for healing for days? I'm assuming there is a point where Rshammies can optimize their cast speed and amount healed per cast which would provide the true best ideal build for straight up healing. I have no clue what this point is.
Edit: I know I'm rambling a bunch in this thread, I was just curious as to which approach other shammies are taking as it's possible to stack versatility and still have insanely low cast times upon enchant proc etc.
After playing resto sham for 8 straight hours today:
So I tried out my resto sham which felt very ADHD for me between purging, dispel, keeping totems, Surging, Riptide, Windshearing, and a lot of classes just roll with EF and dot a few things to destroy damage meters. I previously had EF and will have a weapon with it enchanted, however, given the recent buff to R shams, I've found that haste stacking is simply too much fun. When your heals are sub 1 second cast and noncrit for 750 It's quite enjoyable.
Previously, I had Hurricane to buff up my haste, but after exploring with Mark of Warsong, I've found that Mark of Warsong could provide better burst on the healing side. Now some people may immediately be like "Mocha, you're a r-tard, Mark of Warsong only procs off of melee weapon strikes" yada yada yada. The deal is, Lightning Shield and Searing Totem count as Melee Attacks and will proc Mark of Warsong.
Hurricane is much more stable and is proccing more consistently which puts my healing surges at .97 seconds down from 1.02 seconds, it's cool to have sub 1 second heals... But with Mark of Warsong, I've gotten my cast down to .895 seconds which is a haste increase of +67.65% which is simply ridiculous... Oh wait I'm a troll... So with my racial that's a .788 second healing surge.
The issue with Mark of Warsong is that it relies on having enemies within range of your totem or Lightning Armor to get a proc. What a Shammy could do, is simply roll with Hurricane and if formation cripples or if you're in range of enemies, pop that Mark of Warsong. This would be particularly useful for Shammies who may be stacking versatility or other stats and need a quick haste increase without stacking haste. For trolls already stacking haste, mark of warsong is simply ridiculous and unnecessary.
Is it worth the 4-5k for the enchant? Possibly not... Especially when Hurricane still gets you under 1 second casts... But Mark of Warsong is definitely a fun.
The decrease from 1.02 second casts to .97 seconds however, isn't exactly game changing, which is making me rethink my strategy. Heartsong boosts my spirit by 30 upon proc which without spirit gear is putting me at 172 combat regen up from 110. So I think I will be switching between heartsong and hurricane for most of the fights and throwing on EF when 1v1ing and then throwing on Mark of Warsong when our D has collapsed and our FC is getting rocked.
Hurricane is much more stable and is proccing more consistently which puts my healing surges at .97 seconds down from 1.02 seconds, it's cool to have sub 1 second heals... But with Mark of Warsong, I've gotten my cast down to .895 seconds which is a haste increase of +67.65% which is simply ridiculous... Oh wait I'm a troll... So with my racial that's a .788 second healing surge.
The issue with Mark of Warsong is that it relies on having enemies within range of your totem or Lightning Armor to get a proc. What a Shammy could do, is simply roll with Hurricane and if formation cripples or if you're in range of enemies, pop that Mark of Warsong. This would be particularly useful for Shammies who may be stacking versatility or other stats and need a quick haste increase without stacking haste. For trolls already stacking haste, mark of warsong is simply ridiculous and unnecessary.
Is it worth the 4-5k for the enchant? Possibly not... Especially when Hurricane still gets you under 1 second casts... But Mark of Warsong is definitely a fun.
The decrease from 1.02 second casts to .97 seconds however, isn't exactly game changing, which is making me rethink my strategy. Heartsong boosts my spirit by 30 upon proc which without spirit gear is putting me at 172 combat regen up from 110. So I think I will be switching between heartsong and hurricane for most of the fights and throwing on EF when 1v1ing and then throwing on Mark of Warsong when our D has collapsed and our FC is getting rocked.
Those of you who are playing resto shammy right now, what approach are you taking? Pure haste for healing surges + riptide? Versatility for increased heals? Some spirit for healing for days? I'm assuming there is a point where Rshammies can optimize their cast speed and amount healed per cast which would provide the true best ideal build for straight up healing. I have no clue what this point is.
Edit: I know I'm rambling a bunch in this thread, I was just curious as to which approach other shammies are taking as it's possible to stack versatility and still have insanely low cast times upon enchant proc etc.
After playing resto sham for 8 straight hours today:
In response to this thread I had played roughly 8 hours of resto sham today. I had encountered a few other resto shammies who were quite potent and had better riptide tics etc and bigger heals than I had. But on the long scheme of things, I've found myself to be quite effective with my haste build putting my surges at 1.04 without weapon proc as overhealing was an extreme issue with having multiple shammies. Very rarely was I not able to bring my friendly back to 100% hp within a few casts.
I've also learned a lot of very valuable lessons when regarding GCDs and how it's not wise to try to riptide often while chain casting but moreso to top someone off. I was wrongfully taking a MOP era HPally approach to the potency of holy shock which does not work very well with resto shams.
When playing R Sham you have so many gcds that can mess with your team if you are solo healing. Between trying to purge an enemy, trying to interrupt one, dotting them, dispelling your friendly, riptiding a friendly, dropping searing totems etc and I found that a good sense of priorities that I had created would be: (this is for an average mid scrum)
Explanation:
The reason why purging and interrupting falls so low on the list for me is because during a mid scrum agm is gone in an instant due to burst. As for interrupting, typically every game I was in today had many Ally healers so only really interrupting gamebreakinig CC interrupts or gamebreakinig heals were effective. Also, if you are in range to interrupt an enemy healer, you're probably about to get a huge chunk of your hp taken out and chances are your team is about to suffer in HP. Sure an interrupt may be what your offense needs to push out the opposing team, but I found this to be very rare.
As for Dispelling friendlies, I found that dispelling friendlies that had 2+ dots on them was not a bad idea in my free time as it reduced the amount of damage my team was taking as a whole by a great deal. Others may just hot their targets and get more healing meters but that's not my game. Dispelling friendlies from hoj or fear, or frost mage CC etc was very effective. I found that many of them were surprised and unaware until late that they had been freed from CC. I guess not enough people have been interrupting CC.
As for dotting rogues, with me having played rogue longer than anything I can truly say that rogues will always come back to bite you. In several premade situations in the past, I had entered combat and gotten combo points on EFC and had gotten a restealth, ambushed and eviscerated and solo dropped EFC. This is only one scenario by which allowing rogues to restealth can be dangerous. Obviously the ninja kick from stealth or the quick kick opener can be cripple an offense or a defense.
Riptide. As I had pointed out, in the past I used to be playing holy pally where your main heal is holy shock as it's just ridiculous and then you just fill with light. This was a horribly incorrect approach for resto sham as riptide is not nearly as effective as holy shock used to be. What I learned very quickly was that this was gcding me from keeping some targets alive. It was much more wise to use riptide on friendlies with tricking hp or to finish someone off or after I had topped someone off. This is also somewhat effective on the run, but I found that a surge is not much more time consuming and is more effective but for a surge, riptide, surge combo etc, it was quite a good way to cover some ground while taking care of heavy incoming damage.
Surge spamming is just insane healing. With heals for 750 at a 1.04 second cast, it's just absolutely insane. I know it's possible to increase the amount a surge can heal for to 850+ but I had found overhealing to be a huge issue with resto shammies and that very rarely was my haste stacked heals not enough. I found several situations where I was taking on several enemies at once and was able to heal myself and keep myself topped to the point where they got bored and moved to a different target. My only issue with surge spamming is that I get very tunnel visioned and can be interrupted or if my DPS crips back and folds while I'm healing someone it makes for horrible placement on occasion. This is something I'll learn with time.
These priorities are what I was using to utilize resto shammy for me and how I found my shammy to be most effective for my team. Several scenarios today I was the main source of horde healing as many horde players queue Tank and Healer and don't perform the roles so our team is down several healers and a FC. I had to FC far too many times today for having never queued as Tank. This can be a huge gimp if you get a game with 9 dps and 1 healer who is the only one with the guts to ever touch a flag.
These are some things that i've learned today while playing resto shammy. I play for objectives and not meters and found myself having to carry far too many times than I cared for. Chances are if we only have 1-2 healers and you are focusing on the mid field game, you probably won't be seeing me much as I'm very busy focusing on our FC and dodging the mid fight to go return on O. For fun I found myself 20k healing behind the top healer in the bg as I was running flags / assisting fc and wanted to test the trottle of resto sham. So I was able to go from 70k healing done to 120k healing done in 5 minutes and ranking over 15k healing higher than him. Charts don't matter but it was interesting and valuable to see how effective resto shammies can be in reference to healing output.
Quick warning, I am not saying by any means I am even remotely correct in any of my priorities or strategies. These are what I really discovered in 1 day which could completely change from how I'm playing shammy tomorrow or the next day. I am not much of a healer but I play one to help even games and for the team gameplay of having one on your team.
I've also learned a lot of very valuable lessons when regarding GCDs and how it's not wise to try to riptide often while chain casting but moreso to top someone off. I was wrongfully taking a MOP era HPally approach to the potency of holy shock which does not work very well with resto shams.
When playing R Sham you have so many gcds that can mess with your team if you are solo healing. Between trying to purge an enemy, trying to interrupt one, dotting them, dispelling your friendly, riptiding a friendly, dropping searing totems etc and I found that a good sense of priorities that I had created would be: (this is for an average mid scrum)
- Surging your team
- Riptiding to finish them off / keep them topped
- Dotting rogues
- Dispelling friendlies
- Purging enemy bubbles
- Interrupting enemy heals
Explanation:
The reason why purging and interrupting falls so low on the list for me is because during a mid scrum agm is gone in an instant due to burst. As for interrupting, typically every game I was in today had many Ally healers so only really interrupting gamebreakinig CC interrupts or gamebreakinig heals were effective. Also, if you are in range to interrupt an enemy healer, you're probably about to get a huge chunk of your hp taken out and chances are your team is about to suffer in HP. Sure an interrupt may be what your offense needs to push out the opposing team, but I found this to be very rare.
As for Dispelling friendlies, I found that dispelling friendlies that had 2+ dots on them was not a bad idea in my free time as it reduced the amount of damage my team was taking as a whole by a great deal. Others may just hot their targets and get more healing meters but that's not my game. Dispelling friendlies from hoj or fear, or frost mage CC etc was very effective. I found that many of them were surprised and unaware until late that they had been freed from CC. I guess not enough people have been interrupting CC.
As for dotting rogues, with me having played rogue longer than anything I can truly say that rogues will always come back to bite you. In several premade situations in the past, I had entered combat and gotten combo points on EFC and had gotten a restealth, ambushed and eviscerated and solo dropped EFC. This is only one scenario by which allowing rogues to restealth can be dangerous. Obviously the ninja kick from stealth or the quick kick opener can be cripple an offense or a defense.
Riptide. As I had pointed out, in the past I used to be playing holy pally where your main heal is holy shock as it's just ridiculous and then you just fill with light. This was a horribly incorrect approach for resto sham as riptide is not nearly as effective as holy shock used to be. What I learned very quickly was that this was gcding me from keeping some targets alive. It was much more wise to use riptide on friendlies with tricking hp or to finish someone off or after I had topped someone off. This is also somewhat effective on the run, but I found that a surge is not much more time consuming and is more effective but for a surge, riptide, surge combo etc, it was quite a good way to cover some ground while taking care of heavy incoming damage.
Surge spamming is just insane healing. With heals for 750 at a 1.04 second cast, it's just absolutely insane. I know it's possible to increase the amount a surge can heal for to 850+ but I had found overhealing to be a huge issue with resto shammies and that very rarely was my haste stacked heals not enough. I found several situations where I was taking on several enemies at once and was able to heal myself and keep myself topped to the point where they got bored and moved to a different target. My only issue with surge spamming is that I get very tunnel visioned and can be interrupted or if my DPS crips back and folds while I'm healing someone it makes for horrible placement on occasion. This is something I'll learn with time.
These priorities are what I was using to utilize resto shammy for me and how I found my shammy to be most effective for my team. Several scenarios today I was the main source of horde healing as many horde players queue Tank and Healer and don't perform the roles so our team is down several healers and a FC. I had to FC far too many times today for having never queued as Tank. This can be a huge gimp if you get a game with 9 dps and 1 healer who is the only one with the guts to ever touch a flag.
These are some things that i've learned today while playing resto shammy. I play for objectives and not meters and found myself having to carry far too many times than I cared for. Chances are if we only have 1-2 healers and you are focusing on the mid field game, you probably won't be seeing me much as I'm very busy focusing on our FC and dodging the mid fight to go return on O. For fun I found myself 20k healing behind the top healer in the bg as I was running flags / assisting fc and wanted to test the trottle of resto sham. So I was able to go from 70k healing done to 120k healing done in 5 minutes and ranking over 15k healing higher than him. Charts don't matter but it was interesting and valuable to see how effective resto shammies can be in reference to healing output.
Quick warning, I am not saying by any means I am even remotely correct in any of my priorities or strategies. These are what I really discovered in 1 day which could completely change from how I'm playing shammy tomorrow or the next day. I am not much of a healer but I play one to help even games and for the team gameplay of having one on your team.
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