Damage prevention and Ancestral Healing

Twice now I’ve made requests about getting more damage prevention abilities for Shamans, and twice I’ve been castigated by commenters for ignoring Ancestral Healing. That’s the Resto talent that will proc up to 10% damage resistance (Ancestral Fortitude) for 15 seconds after a critical heal. In the past it would proc an armor bonus up to 25%, but the flat damage resistance was added in a buff pass in patch 3.2.

It’s a nice effect, but it doesn’t meet my needs when I ask for the ability to prevent damage. Because:

1. I can’t precisely control when it gets applied. That comes from the nature of an on-crit proc. I have not fond memories of one of our Resto Shamans holding up pulls in Karazhan spamming rank 1 Lesser Healing Waves with cries of “Hold on, hold on! I need to proc the armor bonus!” When I know damage is coming, I want to take an active hand in preventing it. Not throw good mana after bad spamming overheals hoping to proc the effect in time.
2. It’s invisible. That might sound trivial, but the only way to know that you have spawned the effect on a target is to scrub their buff list for it. Feedback-free effects like this drive me batty. If Blizzard wants us to get our heads out of the UI and pay attention to the world, they’re going to have to start by keying important information visually and aurally.
3. While I don’t like whining about deficiencies with respect to other class’ abilities, it is markedly inferior to every other mitigation effect in the game.

I want damage mitigation to be a first-class mechanic in the game. And for that to happen, every healer (Druids included) needs to be able to effectively stop damage. It is no longer enough to spend your whole time responding to damage that has already been applied.

Hybrid healers and detritus spells

Somewhere in the depths of Blizzard’s database is information about who casts what spells and under what conditions. From that giant heap it’s a simple matter to see patterns of usage. For instance, when they noticed a disturbingly high number of Chain Heals coming from Enhancement Shamans on the General Vezax (hard mode) fight, they acted to stop that exploit.

Because of that knowledge, we can safely assume that the designers know when a spell falls into obscurity. If it remains ununsed for a long time, we know that they do not consider it a design priority to fix. How long has it been since Greater Heal was a part of a Priest’s regular setup? Why are Lesser Heal and Heal orphaned in the priest spellbook? When was the last time you saw a Druid turn to Healing Touch without Nature’s Swiftness? How many Lifeblooms do you see these days?

There’s a fundamental divide here between the healing classes. Priests and Druids hold down one side with a broad selection of multi-purpose healing spells. Shamans and Paladins anchor the other end, each sporting a svelte selection of highly focused spells. Priests and Druids both have a lot of healing spells. A substantial fraction of those spells go unused.

I don’t understand why there’s such a disparity in number of spells available to each healing class. Every healing class is also capable of DPS, and 2 of them can even do tanking builds. No class is a pure healing class. So why are Shamans and Paladins given so many fewer tools to work with than Priests and Druids?

As much as I admire the flexibility of Prests and Druids, I also appreciate the simplicity of the more concise Resto spellbook. I’d like to broaden the Resto Shaman’s situational abilities — ideally without creating a detritus of unused spells.

So here’s my proposal. Discard Healing Wave and replacing it with a Power Word: Shield-like ability. That would give us a anticipatory heal, which we sorely lack, without simply increasing the number of spells. At the same time it would greatly help pull Shamans out of the traditional pigeon hole of raid healing.

Lazy Sunday reading

Cheek Magazine, issue 5Still no word on Shaman Tier 10 armor aside from names. If it doesn’t happen soon, I’m worried that Lodur will explode. The names, oddly, are all variants on Frost Witch. Garb / Regalia / Battlegear — maybe this time they’ll keep straight which applies to what spec. Frost Witch is a strangely emasculating choice for male shamans.

Our good friend Aurik is not just back, he’s found that he is enjoying the game again.

Everyone is talking about the new boss monitoring addon Deus Vox Encounters, or DXE. Check out posts from Matticus, Drug, and Windsoar.

Allison Robert from Wow.com had a fascinating post examining what it is to heal battlegrounds as a Resto Druid. I still feel stung by their incredible dominance in Burning Crusade days. Apparently things are very different now.

Rhidach on Righteous Defense responds to the upcoming Paladin nerfs by making a request for stances to address the not infrequent problems that crop up in Paladins (and Shamans occasionally too) where the wrong spec is best at healing a particular encounter. His proposal is much like mine to create tanking and DPS auras for guiding your focus.

Circle of healers

I got tagged for the big healer survey by the nameless proprietor of HolyPaladin.net. That was several days ago, I’m afraid, and I missed it until now. Shame on me. Here goes.

What is the name, class, and spec of your primary healer?

I play Llyra, a Resto Shaman on Shandris.

What is your primary group healing environment? (i.e. raids, pvp, 5 mans)

I am currently on break from it, but raid healing has been my primary focus. I have a fair bit of 5-man instance experience. Little PvP.

What is your favorite healing spell for your class and why?

Have to go with the party line here and pick Chain Heal. Shamans don’t have a lot of healing spells — 4 active and 2 passive. Of the active spells, Chain Heal has the greatest depth. Between timing, target selection, and taking advantage of procs, there is a lot of variability in how effective the spell can be.

What healing spell do you use least for your class and why?

Healing Wave. The game moves too fast for a base 3 second single-target heal to be very useful.

What do you feel is the biggest strength of your healing class and why?

My favorite aspect of Shaman healing is that the small number of healing tools at our disposal cover so many situations! We are quick and powerful, survivable and flexible. I find most classes in the game overwhelmed by the sheer number of buttons available. A well-played Warrior boggles my mind. Shamans, more than any other class, imbue great depth in a small number of spells.

What do you feel is the biggest weakness of your healing class and why?

There are 2 main deficiencies in Shaman healing. First is a lack of clutch healing abilities. Every single heal we have is reactive. Even knowing that the big hit is coming, there’s nothing we can really do about it.

And of course, healing on the move. I have 2 instant heals, one on a 6 second cooldown and one on a 2 minute cooldown. With as many fights that require frequent or constant movement, this is a crippling limitation. That 4 Horsemen fight in Naxxramas was my bane. The Twin Valkyr are similarly challenging.

In a 25 man raiding environment, what do you feel, in general, is the best healing assignment for you?

Raid heals. I’ve seen remarks to the effect that Shamans are now the game’s best tank healers. I honestly don’t know what they’re looking at when they say that. And I do think that we are the best raid healers, bellyaching about Priests and Druids notwithstanding.

What healing class do you enjoy healing with most and why?

Probably Priests, whether Discipline or Holy. Mostly this has to do with my own familiarity with that class. Because I know what they can do, I can best accommodate their strengths into my own strategy. I know significantly less about Druids and Paladins.

What healing class do you enjoy healing with least and why?

Other Shamans, because the more of them there are the more I feel obliged to start managing. Juggling totems and earth shields around a heterogenous group of Shamans is tedious.

What is your worst habit as a healer?

The easy answer here would be to say Chain Healing a single target. But I honestly don’t feel particularly bad about that. Chain Heal is the Shaman version of a protective heal. If someone near that target takes damage, it will splash to them.

Probably my greatest liability as a Shaman healer is not developing different builds for different fights or phases. I could be planning out different groupings of totems for phases 1 and 2, different relics for single-target heavy sections, different gear sets for Mimiron versus Yogg.

What is your biggest pet peeve in a group environment while healing?

Healers complaining about other healers. Or pointing and laughing. Healing is a team effort, and that sort of thing is needlessly destructive.

Do you feel that your class/spec is well balanced with other healers for PvE healing?

Sure. In the early days of Ulduar I felt disadvantaged. A combination of low mana, instant kill abilities around the raid, constant required movement, and the dependence on the near-super-powered Prayer of Healing was pretty discouraging. Melee-raid-healing was really too small a niche for 1 of the 4 healing classes. Things have been tuned since, though, and I feel good about where Resto Shamans are right now.

What tools do you use to evaluate your own performance as a healer?

I’m all about the tools. I use Recount in game, and am not above silently preening when I have a commanding lead over the other healers, despite the meaninglessness of that. I’ve used 3 different web-based log parsers at different times, depending on the guild I’m with. Shaman_hep’s log analysis tool is invaluable. And I write some of my own tools, including GridStatusChainWho and the forthcoming HealingDummy.

What do you think is the biggest misconception people have about your healing class?

I suppose I haven’t run into many problems of the sort others report. Lodur’s experience recently with being rejected from healing a heroic 5-man because “Shamans can’t heal heroics” was baffling. I’ve been stunned at how well-rounded Shamans are healing in 5-man groups. Ultimately that’s why I’m healing!

When it came time to raid heal, I found Shaman healers were a rarity, and many doors were open to me. While the capabilities I brought to the table were not always known by the raid leaders, I had no trouble convincing them of my worth.

What do you feel is the most difficult thing for new healers of your class to learn?

Learning to properly manage the totem buffs, taking into account specifics of a fight, presence of other Shamans, Group- and Raid-scoped effects, positioning, and avoiding redundancy due to non-stacking effects. It can be a lot of juggle.

If someone were to try to evaluate your performance as a healer via recount, what sort of patterns would they see (i.e. lots of overhealing, low healing output, etc)?

Aggressive Chain Healing with moderately low overheal. Riptide and Earth Shield are my primary single target heals these days.

Haste or Crit and why?

In general I prefer crit. Like Paladins, crit feeds my mana in addition to pumping up the power of the spells. I’ll take either, depending on what gear drops. I’m not picky. It just so happens that Ulduar was extremely crit-heavy. My current gear ranking strongly favors haste, however, to make up for the unbalanced nature of what Ulduar did to my stats.

What healing class do you feel you understand least?

Druids. Partly because I have had limited exposure to them as healers, and partly because my own attempts at leveling a druid always bog down in the early 20s.

What add-ons or macros do you use, if any, to aid you in healing?

Grid and Clique are the anchors of my healing setup. I’m not shy with the plugins to Grid: GridStatusHealingReduced, GridStatusRaidDebuff, GridStatusChainWho, GridManaBars, GridStatusHots, GridStatusRes. PowerAuras and TotemTimers are key for keeping abreast of situational developments. Depending on how broadly we interpret “aid in healing”, I should also include things like DBM, BossNotes, Aloft, Loggerhead, MSBT, oUF, Recount, Outfitter, Pawn, TipTac, and SmartRes.

I also run with about a dozen macros, generally to hook trinkets, Tidal Waves, or Nature’s Swiftness to a heal, or prevent myself from firing Heroism outside of combat.

Do you strive primarily for balance between your healing stats, or do you stack some much higher than others, and why?

Strive for balance. In the early days I was all Int/MP5 because I was paranoid about running out of mana. Before the big MP5 boost, those choices made sense. I was constantly struggling against the bottom of my barrel. Since the buff, a more balanced approach among all 4 stats is the most sensible.

Finally, a parting thought. This circle of healers thing that’s so big in the WoW blogger community? This is probably going on in other languages all over the world. As for tagging others, I’m going to nominate some of my Shandris buddies. Solo, Cadowin, Hypo — do it in the comments.

Lazy Sunday reading

I liked having the afternoon off last Sunday I’ve decided to make it a regular thing. Here are links to some of the things that have provoked me or kept me entertained this week. Oh, and I put in a new threaded discussion widget, linked out of the header panel. Anyone is free to create or reply. Try it out; let me know what you think.

Rohan at Blessing of Kings asks Is spell haste bad for the game? I tend to think that it is. I was thrilled to see someone out there who didn’t just agree, but came up with a series of solid arguments why.

Have you seen the outrage over the GearScore addon recently? People are getting downright angry about exclusionary group building tactics. “LF Healer H-AK, iLvl 245 only plz.” I’m on the fence about that. I mean, if that guy doesn’t want to run with good players’ alts, that’s fine. Why would you want to run with him anyway? I don’t think the yelling was as loud as it is now, though. I’m guessing that has to do with the upcoming LFG tool. But before that comes, Karatheya of Cold Comfort has an alternative player evaluation tool.

In the last year, the gang at RockPaperShotgun have turned that site into my favorite general video game resource. Two articles have jumped out at me recently. First, if there are any budding game makers out there, the Unity 3d engine has gone free for indie games. There’s some remarkable stuff out there built in Unity, including the remarkable PuzzleBloom. And then, they introduced me to Small World — the finest browser-based game I have ever played.

Miss Medicina’s healer survey is blowing up huge! There’s no stopping this thing. Eventually it will paper all of us. Rather like the great zombie plague of ‘08.

Azeroth United’s Child’s Play charity work is getting into high gear with the year end approaching. This one is talking about something called a Twibbon, which I’m sure cooler people than me knew about long before that article. And Sideshow & Syrana have come up with a way to both dodge blame and help sick kids in a single shot. They’re asking for whatever help people can give, which can come in as small a flavor as tweeting about it. Or, chip in directly with the widget below.