Resto shaman BiS gear question

[Zanbaka]

Yeah the gist of it was to point out the use of +heal vs mp5/int in various situations and how to generally pick your gear, as a shaman I wouldnt stick to 1 BiS list ever.
Peenix had the same chainheal and T1 bugs for a long time, yet this comparison is still garbage and even if it wasnt, if you compare 5 int to 1mp5, that would be based on a 6.25 minute fight considering the mana regen vs larger mana pool and that doesnt even include the spellcrit you gain (mostly) on your chain heal bounces but also on your initial heals. Furthermore, 6 min + fights indicate post BWL-thinking in general.
The variety of gear you listed there is awesome, but keep in mind that you want alternative tank healing sets to 3/8 T2 (highly recommended is 5/8 T1 or 8/8 when its about tank healing with stacked up raid members)... You said you dont like taking advantadge of bugs, so it would be 5/8 for you I guess.
But even apart from T1, you want full mp5 pieces for cleansing and occasional speedruns with 0 drinking time if you have no lack of heal throughput at all and cant downrank further, also full +heal pieces for a fight like vael.
Best exemple is probably Shard of the scale for vael.. any trinket with like +20 heal power would beat it on that single fight, even if you only have a green backup item you need one.

Swap items for every situation!


There is a difference between on one hand stacking full + heal on a 30-60 second fight like lucifron, using pots and runes, going all out on max rank heals and being top hps easily and oom at the end of the fight and on the other hand actually being sustaining and useful .

That's an interesting idea, having like a BiS set per certain stat (MP5, healing) for each situation. Unfortunately I've never done AQ40 and Naxx before, but imo in current content the only bosses that benefit from "unique" gear are Vael and Chromaggus (if you are dispelling). Then again, Vael is pretty easy so it would hardly be worth it to farm a pure +heal set specifically for him. During Chromaggus, for half of the fight you will be stunned anyways because of that damn bronze affliction (unless you want to spend a shitload of gold on dust), so you will regenerate a lot of mana anyway cos of the 5 second rule. On Nef it might be nice to have some more MP5 because of the shaman class call (that shit really drains mana fast), and overall because the fight is pretty long. But in general, at least in current content I think the list covers 95% of the fights/bosses, and in endgame content most gear has a combination of +heal and MP5 so you don't need to fret about it anymore.

About the T1 5/8 set, alone it seems kinda underwhelming. On average you save 0.35 * 0.25 = ~9% mana, which is not that much especially considering that it is pretty hard to go OOM if you use consumables. You also use lot on a shitload of +heal and MP5 so I would hardly consider it a viable option without the 8/8.

So overall, I think having a mixed item-set that is a bit more +heal heavy covers most situations so it's not necessary (yet) to get specific items

[deathcoilz]

keep in mind the more +healing you have the more powerful +mp5 becomes

[egorgeous]

Ideally you take as much +healing and Int as you can and take as little MP5 as possible. The stat priorities I mentioned were ones that balanced mana consumption and throughput with a 60% CHr1, 35% CHr2, and 5% CHr3 breakdown on an average length encounter.

If you're using full consumables, it's better to balance yourself around spamming CHr1 and 2 picking up items with a modicum of MP5 on them (basically try not to pick up items with only +healing, especially early in the game). Since it's incredibly rare that you will ever have the opportunity to efficiently use CHr3 throughout the course of the expansion, CHr1 and 2 are your go-tos. The way the gear available works, having a bit of MP5 and being able to spam CHr2 on occasion is better than having +healing and only ever using CHr1 -this is taking into consideration the CH bug that was also live on Feenix.

*Edit: I'd also want to amend that I believe the BIS lists I put forward take as little MP5 as possible while offering the best throughput on fights longer than about 4 minutes.

[Zanbaka]

Ideally you take as much +healing and Int as you can and take as little MP5 as possible. The stat priorities I mentioned were ones that balanced mana consumption and throughput with a 60% CHr1, 35% CHr2, and 5% CHr3 breakdown on an average length encounter.

If you're using full consumables, it's better to balance yourself around spamming CHr1 and 2 picking up items with a modicum of MP5 on them (basically try not to pick up items with only +healing, especially early in the game). Since it's incredibly rare that you will ever have the opportunity to efficiently use CHr3 throughout the course of the expansion, CHr1 and 2 are your go-tos. The way the gear available works, having a bit of MP5 and being able to spam CHr2 on occasion is better than having +healing and only ever using CHr1 -this is taking into consideration the CH bug that was also live on Feenix.

*Edit: I'd also want to amend that I believe the BIS lists I put forward take as little MP5 as possible while offering the best throughput on fights longer than about 4 minutes.

Hey Egreg, I'm kinda curious tho, how did you calculate these HEP values? You state that 1 MP5 = 5 int, but that only applies to a 6.25 min+ fight as Aslan stated (that doesn't even take into account the extra crit and 5% mana from talent). A lot of guides have HEP values for different stages in the game, so how would you rate them for shamans?

(Still, I think the HEP values can be deceiving, as int and MP5 are only useful in mana depleted situations whereas +heal is always useful)

[egorgeous]

Okay, so, to find the values, I basically started by first removing all my gear to find the baseline value of my mana pool and CH ranks. Once you find the average of each specific rank of CH, you can start adding gear to determine the value of the stats (Int, +healing, Spirit, and Crit). The relation can be nonlinear when you retake the values at each "BIS" gear level.

Int, essentially, gives you a linear boost to your mana pool and a marginal amount of Crit per point and +healing obviously scales the raw throughput of your healing spells. The way Int works is basically (+ x) amount of extra CHr1s. After that, it's easy to math out to how much +healing that would be based on the throughput value of whatever gear you're wearing.

+healing is obvious. It's just a multiplier effecting your raw healing. It's easier to look at +healing as the baseline and Int, MP5, Spirit, and Crit as the modifiers. So a better way to look at the HEP values I found would be: 7 +healing = 5 Int = 1 MP5 based on stat priority with +healing being the most important stat after mana needs are met. I didn't bother with Crit or Spirit as Crit is few and far between, the majority of which you will get from Int, and Spirit isn't as much of a game-changer without T1 8/8 and DMF Card.

MP5 is less straight forward but still relatively easy to figure out. I took each set of gear to relevant encounters and Frapsed several 4 to 6 minutes kills with my combat log open -I couldn't find a decent parser anywhere so this was very tedious. I took the breakdown of the spells I utilized and calculated how many of the CHr1s, r2s or r3s I was able to cast beyond my static mana pool were due to the return from MP5. You then calculate those heals as +healing. Another, easier, way to do this is just by calculating how much mana (x) amount of MP5 would give you over the course of whatever (y) duration you would be in combat -this is your dynamic mana pool (assume you will never benefit from the 5 second rule). Math that out, calculate that into as many CHs of whatever rank you want, typically r1 or r2, and calculate that as +healing.


I think the biggest problem here is the way I listed the HEP values looks like order of priority. The list of 1MP5 etc. etc. implies the assumption that MP5 is the primary stat to derive all other values from. In fact, this couldn't be more the opposite. I arrived at my conclusion for the value of MP5 last. Additionally, these values operate under the further assumption you are healing in the style that I believe is optimal; spamming CHs of varying ranks without entering the 5 second rule. Finally, it operates under the possibly narcissistic assumption you are not overhealing the bosses with a bloated healing roster.


*Edit: HEP values can definitely be deceiving. You need to understand the rational behind them in order to justify swapping pieces on an encounter-by-encounter basis. Say for instance, the Whipvine Cord versus Corehound Belt question. This is a perfect example of knowing when to apply HEP values. The difference between the two pieces is 7 Int, 6MP5, and 31 +healing. Failing to recall the amount of mana that Int will give you, the difference is roughly ~288 mana versus 31 +healing over the course of 4 minutes. Not a very significant contribution from MP5 over that duration but still accounts for a single CHr1 or 5 (rounded down) upranked CHr2s. You'd then have to determine which is worth more.

I don't have access to a level 60 Shaman with any gear or I'd help out there.


*Edit 2: It's still a pretty autistic way to figure our HEP values as it doesn't take into account overhealing. So it's really discretionary at some point whether or not you believe you can sustain your mana pool in favor of +healing and Int.

[Thatoneguy]

Very interesting, thanks for sharing egorgeous. After reading your guide I fell under the trap thinking that MP5 was the primary stat. Through playing I gradually shifted away to replace most MP5 items with +Healing/+Int and saw a significant rise in my HPS meter. Now that I understand how MP5 is calculated I can experiment with a good balance between the stats.

This server also has a couple of bugs that might increase the +healing value. Most notable: Chain Heal jumps get 100% value from the +healing stat. This makes the 2T3 bonus very powerful as it adds another +30% healing to Chain Heal.

[Zanbaka]

It is less than 100% on the CH jumps, as I have 572 +heal with T2-3 set and the jumps still heal less than the initial bounce (I believe it was T1 8/8 healing wave bounces that gained 100% of the +heal). I did some rough calculations yesterday, and in the end the result was something like this:

@ +572 heal:
CHr1: ~ 800/675/580
CHr2: ~ 900/750/630
CHr3: ~ 1100/850/750

I also tested CHr1 naked, and that seems to be working as intended as it was ~ 400/200/100 (note that the jumps aren’t exactly 50% of the previous jump, there’s some variance involved). I also removed my bracers (T2 bracers with +24 healing), and the healing per jump dropped notably, so I assume that the +30% on jumps is working as intended (was too lazy to check the exact values, might do that another time). Now that we have that out of the way, here’s the formulas to calculate the +heal coefficient for the jumps:

Formula 1
Base= base heal + (HSp * 0.71)
J1 = (0.5Base + (HSp*X)) *1.3
J2 = (0.25Base + (HSp*Y))*1.3

Formula 2
Base= base heal + (HSp * 0.71)
J1 = (0.5Base + (HSp*X)) *1.3
J2 = (0.5J1 + (HSp*Y))*1.3

X is the coefficient for J1, Y is the coefficient for J2. To prevent things from getting excessively difficult let’s just stick with this for the moment and do the calculations:

Formula 1:
800 ~ 400 + (572*0.71)
675 ~ (0.5*800+572X)*1.3
580 ~ (0.25*800+572Y)*1.3
120 = 572X
X = 0.21
246 = 572Y
Y = 0.43

Formula 2:
800 ~ 400 + (572*0.71)
675 ~ (0.5*800+572X)*1.3
580 ~ (0.5*675+572Y)*1.3

Everything should be the same, except for Y:
109 = 572Y
Y = 0.19

So to me it seems Formula 2 is the correct one, as X and Y are way closer to each other (and are probably the same actually, so both jumps have the same coefficient for HSp). So based on this, let’s try to check the results with another formula:

Formula 3
Base= base heal + (HSp * 0.71)
J1 = (0.5Base*1.3) + (HSp*X)
J2 = (0.5J1*1.3) + (HSp*Y)

800 ~ 400 + (572*0.71)
675 ~ (0.5*800*1.3)+(572X)
580 ~ (0.5*675*1.3)+(572Y)

155 = 572X
X = 0.27
140 = 572Y
y = 0.24

So depending on which formula you use, the jumps have an added coefficient of about 0.20-0.25. Note that the jumps also gain an indirectly amount of +healing through the previous jumps, making especially J2 a lot stronger than intended.

Disclaimer: These values were quickly calculated, if someone has the true coefficient, please post it here

@Egorge
Thanks for the explanation, I guess what it comes down to is the following:
1. Go especially for +heal and int, and a moderate amount of MP5
2. If no good +heal alternative exists, go for MP5 (a good example of this is Shard of the Scale)
But still, even in the most tryhard +heal gear, you will still have some MP5 as a lot of good items have both stats (for example Rejuv Gem, Shroud of PT, Salamander Scale Pants, Ring of Blackrock etc.), even more so at higher gear levels. The argument can also be made that with consumables you can easily reach +30/32 MP5 + extra mana through mana pots and dark runes.

Another element I’d like to add to the discussion is this: For short healing-intense fights, may it be worth it to use ZHC or that other trinket that gives +350 heal for 15 sec? We’ve already established that CH is broken as shit when it comes to scaling, so I assume it would be pretty sweet in high AoE damage situations

[Killstick]

I still have a few questions/remarks concerning this (T1 8/8 vs T2 3/8) towards AQ40

1) Like was said before there is no "1 set to rule them all". MP5 vs Intellect in function of the length of the fight is the most obvious one here. I think in content on farm mp5 drops of alot unless you go for a speedclear with little time to drink.
2) Since we are taking into account all loot available in current content we should assume we are gearing for an AQ40 clear in BWL/ZG/MC gear. I'd also take HW 10 into account. If you need to stick to 8/8 T1 you are gimping your stats even more in upcoming content but then again 8/8 T1 benefits most from the new rank of HW that will come with the patch.
Now tbh I've little knowledge about AQ40 but i guess i'll look into this to check how long the fights last, how much the raid is spread, if there is a lot of raid damage (constant or spikes). Is there anyone with recent expierence on another server with AQ40 that could elaborate a bit?
3) I see alot of high end shamans running 8/8 T1 but don't you keep a minimum amount of shamans to raid heal with 3p T2? Doesn't T1 drop of alot for raidhealing? I find it hard to imagine having all your shamans in 8/8 T1 (if they have it) and letting them all tank heal.
4) Isn't the mechanical benefit of CH overlooked a bit when concidering these numbers? When you are spamming chain heal (even on the tank), and the 2nd jump is indeed broken, I don't think anything can match that reaction speed to someone dipping low. Healing, mana etc can be "fixed" with consumables but a pure mechanical advantage like this cannot.

TL:DR

- BiS list out of current content per AQ40 boss?
- Do you keep atleast 1 or 2 Chain heal spammers with 3p T2 or should all shamans go for 8/8 T1?