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This is part two of my Resto-Shaman guides to Naxxramas. These guides are designed with the Resto-Shaman in mind, but may be beneficial for any healers. These guides are a condensed overview of each Naxxramas encounter allowing the Resto Shaman to understand their roll in the raid.
You have probably conquered your fear of spiders and maybe even gotten “Arachnophobia”. The next logical step in Naxxramas will probably be the topic of this guide, the Plague Wing. The encounters in the Plague Wing are more about coordination than anything and you will need to be on the ball if you wish to keep your raid alive.
Naxxramas: Plague Wing
Trash: The trash in the Plague wing will consist of gargoyles, oozes, slimes, worms and bats oh my. The only thing to really keep an eye out for is any diseases, make sure to cleanse them as quickly as possible or drop a disease cleansing totem if the majority of the raid is getting plagued.
Noth the Plaguebringer: The first boss encounter in the Plague Wing is the a former Wizard/Alchemist of Dalaran, Noth. This encounter is broken up into two repeating phases.
Phase One: Noth will be engaged by the main tank. During this time he will curse three random raid members. It is important that you de-curse these s quickly as possible within 10 second. If you rail to remove the curses, both the targeted raid member and anyone near them will take a significant amount of damage.
Also during this time, Noth sill summon Plague Warriors that will need to be picked up by the off tank and DPS’ed down by a couple of the raid members.
As a healer, this phase is all about cleansing. As long as you can cleanse your raid healing will be only needed on the two tanks.
Phase Two: At this point Noth will teleport to his balcony and he will summon Plague Champions and Plague Guardians. The Guardians need to be targeted first since they cast Arcane Explosion and can cause a good amount of raid wide damage.
During this phase make sure to keep the raid topped of with chain heal or a combo of riptide and LHW. This will make any Arcane Explosions less stressful on you.
These phases will cycle three times. After the third time you will need to burn Noth down or he will enrage and wipe the raid, making the time after Noth returns from his balcony the first time a very crucial time in the encounter.
Once Noth has teleported back after phase two and the warrior has gained aggro control, cast blood lust, drop your fire elemental totem and start DPS’ing and heal when needed. Your raid will want to do all it can to get Noth down at this point.
Heigan the Unclean: After working your way through a bevy of bats, worms and other trash you will come upon the keeper of the Naxxramas house music and coordinator or all Lich King’s raves, Heigan.
This encounter is all about paying attention. During this fight there are two phases. Phase one is the tank/dps phase and phase two is the dance phase.
Phase One: During this phase the tank and all the melee DPS will engage Heigan on the main floor while the range DPS and the healers are on the Heigan’s platform. During this phase, the tank and the DPS will have to move Heigan around the room avoiding the poison waves splashing up from the floor. Pay attention to this part to get an idea of the pattern of the splashed. Your job on this phase will be to heal the main tank and cleanse anyone who has been diseased.
Phase Two: At this point Heigan has had enough his dance and will force you as a raid to dance for him. Heigan will teleport back to his platform and the raid must gather together in what is known as quarter one. During this time you will need to move from quarter to quarter avoiding the poison splashed. The patter is 1…2…3…4…3…2…1…2…3…4…3…2…1. If you are new to this encounter pay attention to nothing but yourself and the waves. Once you have gotten used to this you will be able to use riptide during the dance to heal up those who have been hit by the waves.
As long as you pay attention this is a rather easy fight. Drop your totems as you normally would. Bloodlust can be kept for the second phase one or used right away once the tank has aggro.
Loatheb: Loatheb is the final boss of the Plague Wing and can drive healers absolutely crazy the first few times they fight him. Loatheb has three things to worry about, Deathbloom a 200 nature damage instant cast and a 1200 DoT that is raid wide, Doom that causes 4000 shadow damage raid wide and Necrotic aura that will reduce healing by 100%…yes you cannot heal at all when this is up, even health stones and health pots do not work during this time. You can cast, but it will be a waste of mana.
During the fight you will be doing primarily DPS since if Loatheb is not killed fast enough he will enrage and wipe the raid. So your job will be to get a fungal creep buff from the spore and nuke, nuke and nuke.
Now, don’t forget you are a healer and every 20 seconds you will get to be a healer for 3 seconds, the time fram between Necrotic Aura fading and getting recast. In ten man you will either be the tank/raid healer or the raid healer. Either way, you will need to be quick. Here is how you can heal in both situations.
Tank/Raid Healing – 2 seconds before Necrotic Aura has faded queue up a HW on the tank. This should hit just after the Aura has faded. Then quickly cast riptide on yourself or a DPS and then cast chain heal. It might take some practice but if timed right you can get three heals off in 3 seconds.
Raid Healing – 2 seconds before aura has faded, chose the lowest hp member in a group and queue up chain heal. This will hit just as aura fades. At this point determine who your next target will be and Riptide them and chain heal them, this will give you a boosted chain heal for those around them.
Repeat these steps every 17 seconds and you will be fine. Just make sure that you are paying attention to your mana since you will be DPS’ing during the fight. Make sure to drop a mana tide around 60% mana and pop a mana pot toward the end when the raid damage starts stacking up pretty heavily. Don’t be shy about asking for help. If there are any Paladins, Druids or other shaman in the raid ask them to heal during those three seconds if things are getting rough for you.
Congratulations, you have just cleared the Plague Wing and survived one of the most stressful healing encounters in the game. Next stop on your tour on Naxxramas will be the Abomination Wing where you will meet your next healing challenge, Patchwerk.
My previous article on the restoration shaman raid build garnered a lot of attention and ended up being a good forum for discussing the pros and cons of the build that I had suggested. I took those comments and started looking at the talent calculator and started trying to find the “perfect” restoration shaman raid build.
I am sorry to say that I have not found the “perfect” raid build and I don’t think there is one. Each shaman is different, be it their play style (ES/LHW tank healer or Chain Heal spamming AoE healer) or their raid make up (10-man vs. 25-man) and this makes it difficult to have a single build for every shaman.
What I have found though is a build template that has some flexibility for the shaman to make decisions based on personal preference. What I ended up with is a 0/13/51 +7 build. This build includes the “must haves” for a restoration shaman and allows you to flesh out the build to match your play style.
Enhancement – 13
Ancestral Knowledge 5/5 – Increase your Intellect by 10%.
Not only will this increase your mana pool, but will increase your mp5, your critical rating and your spell power.
Improved Shields 3/3 – Increase the damage done by lighting shield, Increase the mana returned from water shield and increase the amount healed by earth shield by 15%
The benefit of this talent is two fold. Not only will we get more mana back from our water shield procs, but we will be healing more with our earth shield which in itself will also aid in mana regeneration.
Thundering Strike 5/5 – Increase your chance to get a critical strike with all spells and attacks.
With the onset of WotLK, the restoration shaman’s talents and healing have become more crit based. Lading a critical heal can proc our water shield for mana regen, proc ancestral healing to increase our targets armor by 25% and can proc Ancestral Awaking for added healing. Another bonus of this is that the crits also affect your damage spells so it boost up your DPS a little while either soloing your dailies or DPS during healing down time. I personally would not leave Thunder Bluff without it.
Restoration – 51
Improved Healing Wave 5/5 – Reduce your cast time of healing wave by .5 seconds.
I will be the first to admit that I do not cast healing wave that often any more, but when I do I am glad to have it be 2.5 seconds rather than 3 seconds. Taking this is a no brainer.
Ancestral healing 3/3 – Increase your targets armor by 25% for 15 seconds after getting a critical effect from one of your healing spells.
More armor = Win!
Tidal Force 5/5 – Reduce mana cost of your healing spells by 5%.
If I have to explain why this is good, please delete your shaman and go roll a Death Knight.
Improved Water Shield 3/3 – When you gain a critical effect from your healing wave, lesser healing wave and riptide you have a 100% chance to consume a water shield orb.
Stack this with improved shields and you will be getting a good amount of mana back on your crits. There has been some discussion about this consuming water shield orbs too quickly and causing timing issues with the global cool down, but I have not been affected by this very much while running 10 man content. After patch 3.0.8 is release this will be changed to be 100% on healing wave and 66% on lesser healing wave and riptide, so this might address the cool down issues without having to reduce the amount of points used in this talent.
Tidal Force 1/1 – Increase the critical effect of your healing wave, lesser healing wave and chain heal by 60%. Each critical effect will reduce the chance by 20%.
With having so many nice talents based on crit, it is a must to take a talent that gives the shaman the ability to almost guarantee a healing crit. If you combine this with the nature’s swiftness/healing wave macro you can land yourself some really big heals in those “Oh Sh!t” moments.
Resorative Totems 5/5 – Increase the effects of your healing stream and your mana stream totems by 25%
This talent increases your mana totem effect at level 80 from 85 mp5 to 106 mp5 and we all know 106 is better than 85.
Tidal Mastery 5/5- Increases the critical chance of your healing and lighting spells by 5%
See above for why crit is good for both healing and grinding.
Nature’s Swiftness 1/1 – When activated your next nature spell with a casting time less than 10 seconds will be instant.
This is the “Oh Sh!t” button that you should not be without. Not only is it handy for those moments when you needed a big heal 2 seconds ago, it can come in handy when the rest of the raid is dead and you are standing face to face with a boss that has all of 4K health left and you are the last line of defense.
Purification 5/5 – Increases the effectiveness of your healing spells by 10%.
Take this talent not only to increase the amount of your healing, but for the next talent where purification is a pre-requisite.
Cleanse Spirit 1/1 – Cleanse the spirit of your target removing one poison, one disease and one curse effect.
I did not how much I loved this talent till I didn’t take it. Having a one button cure is so helpful and finally being able to clear a curse is heaven.
Mana Tide Totem 1/1 – Summons a mana tide totem that restores 24% of a player’s mana over 12 seconds.
If you are a restoration shaman and do not have this skill…you are not a restoration shaman.
Improved Chain Heal 2/2 – Increase the amount healed by chain heal by 20%.
As much as some shamans, like myself, try not to use chain heal as much as we used to there is no denying that it is still our most effective healing spell. This is a must for all raiders to handle raid damage in both 10 and 25 man content.
Blessing of the Eternals 2/2 – Increase the critical effect chance of your spells by 4% and increase your chance to apply the earth living effect by 80% on your target when they are at or under 35% health.
Another talent that increases our chance to crit, are we getting the hint yet. The added bonus for applying our EL HoT on a target that is low is nice, not game changing but any extra healing can mean the difference between a loot piñata or a raid wipe.
Nature’s Blessing 3/3 – Increase your healing by 15% of your intelligence.
A nice boost to our healing power is greatly appreciated and has great synergy with the ancestral knowledge skill that increases your mana by 10%.
Earth Shield 1/1 – A six charged shield that has a chance to heal the target when hit and reduces spell pushback by 30% when hit.
This is one of the class defining mechanics we have as a shaman. Not only is this an added heal to the target, normally a tank, but the healing agro done by the shield is based on the target and not the caster.
Improved Earth Shield 2/2 – Increases the shield charges to 8 and increases the amount healed by 10%.
This is a must for the added heals and the extra procs. Stack this with improved shields and the healing from earth shield will be increased by 25%.
Tidal Waves 5/5 – You have a 100% chance after you cast chain heal or riptide to lower the cast time of your next two lesser healing wave or healing wave spells by 30%. In addition, healing wave will gain an additional 20% of your bonus healing and your lesser healing wave will gain an additional 10% of your bonus healing.
Take this talent, cast riptide and either two LHW or HW and go to town. This is what has helped us be a viable tank healer and allowed for a better single target raid healing role. This has also allowed the shaman to become a little more mobile when healing. The less time it takes to cast the quicker we can move when needed. This has become one of my favorite talents in the restoration tree.
Riptide 1/1 – Heals a target for 639 to 692 and then another 665 over 15 seconds. The next chain heal cast on the main target will consume riptide and will increase the amount healed by chain heal by 25%
Finally what I have been dreaming of as a restoration shaman, an instant heal and it even has a HoT attached to it. This spell has allowed me to tank heal while proc’ing tidal waves, has allowed me uber raid heals with the chain heal effect and has allowed me to heal on the move. If there has been one talent added to the restoration shaman’s arsenal that I cannot live without, it is Riptide.
This build now allows you to spend 7 points any where you want dependent on your play style. If you normally run 5/10 man content, ancestral awaking may be useful for the extra heals. If you are learning new content and the learning curve is steep you could go for improved re-incarnation and nature’s blessing and if you are having issues with agro you can spend the points in healing grace to reduce your healing threat.
No matter what you choose, know that the build above is solid and will give you all the tools you will need to heal raid content. You can even go in with this build without using the 7 extra talent points and do absolutely fine. This has been proven, but you might not want to tell my raid group.
This is part one of my Resto-Shaman guides to Naxxramas. These guides are designed with the Resto-Shaman in mind, but may be beneficial for any healers. These guides are a short, bulleted overview of each Naxxramas encounter allowing the Resto Shaman to understand their roll in the raid.
Welcome to Naxxramas, the floating citadel of the Lich King’s minions. Within it’s walls you will find some of the most notorious and nefarious this side of Icecrown. Upon zoning in, you will face your first challenge, Mr.. Bigglesowrth. Once his fate has been decided make your way to the first wing of Naxxramas that most raids start with…the spider wing.
Naxxramas: Spider Wing
Trash: Trash in the spider wing is well…spiders. Make sure to cleanse poisons or keep poison cleansing totem down if mana is not an issue since you will loose mana tide for the poison cleansing totem.
Anub’Rekhan: This is the first boss you will encounter in the Spider wing. He is alone in a large round room. The basic fight is a tank and spank with a spawned adds until phase two. This is where AR cast locust swarm and the raid group collapses into the center of the room while the tank kites AR around the perimeter of the room (12 to 6 then 6 to 12). This cycle repeats until he is dead or he hits the enrage timer and the raid is wiped.
During the locust swarm the main tank is usually out of range for heals without the healer getting within range locust swarm. To help get the tank through this phase cast a fresh earth shield on the tank and well as a riptide. Between the shield and the HoT from riptide it should be enough to get the tank to his next tanking position.
While the tank is kiting AR around the room, the rest of the raid is in the middle of the room taking out adds. During this time, you will probably be healing the off tank and the raid via chain heal. If you are able to handle the healing on your own, have the second healer move to roughly 7 or just right of the entrance. This will allow the healer to be in position to heal the main tank right away while avoiding the locust swarm.
Since AR has a 10 minute enrage timer you will want to have the DPS burn him down as quickly as possible. Once the main tank has establish agro, pop bloodlust. If the fight last long enough and you have a second shaman you can have another bloodlust for the end of the fight.
As for totems, I usually place them in the middle of the room and drop mana tide around 65-70% mana. This allows me to keep near full mana and will allow for a second mana tide toward the end of the fight.
Grand Widow Faerlina: GWF is Boss number two in a room full of spiders and acolytes. The room is cleared group by group be having the tank pulling each group by line of sight pulling them. Once the room is cleared, only GWF and four adds are left.
The fight requires some coordination. The main tank will engage GWF on the platform and the off tank will grab the adds and move them to one side of the stairs. Each time GWF goes into frenzy, the main tank will pull her to adds where the DPS will burn one down quick to proc Widow’s Embrace to remove GWF’s frenzy effect. Once frenzy is removed the tank will move her away until the next frenzy. Rinse and repeat till she is dead.
Healing this fight isn’t very difficult. The main tank doesn’t take too much significant damage, but there is a good chunk of AoE raid damage that needs to be healed and people will need to be on their toes when fighting so as to move out of the AoE affects.
Totems are standard, but GWF does do a AoE poison volley so if you are slow on cleansing a poison cleansing totem is a good idea.
Maexxna: The final boss of the Spider wing and not an easy fight for arachnophobics.
There are two things to be aware of during this fight, Web Wrap and Web Spray. Web Wrap will target a random raid member wrapping them in a cocoon and tossing them against the back wall. The web needs to be killed off fast to keep the person alive.
Web spray on the other hand is on a 40 second timer and is 4 second raid wide incapacitate.
Along with the web effects, every 30 seconds Maex will spawn spider adds that will need to be picked up by the off tank and AoE’d down.
During the fight there is some nasty poison to deal with. Necrotic Poison reduces heals on the tank by 75% which that needs to be cleansed right away if you plan on keeping the tank healed at all.
As for healing, it is much like a tank and spank. When Web Spray is cast you can’t heal or cleanse so just before Web Spray make sure to cast a fresh earth shield and a riptide and drop your poison cleansing totem to help the tank survive during the 4 seconds. If needed pop Nature Swiftness and Healing Wave if you have fallen behind healing the tank.
At 30% Maex will frenzy causing 50% more damage. At this point you will want to increase heals on the tank and pop blood lust. Just before Web Wrap make sure your tank shield walls and regens, assuming you have a warrior tank. If you cannot get Maex down before the next web wrap have the off tank pick her up and shield wall and regen again…assuming your off tank is also a warrior.
Congratulations, the spider wing is cleared and if you did it in less than 20 minutes you will have gotten the Arachnophobia achievement. In the next guide we will go off into the plague wing for some instruction, a dance and three second heal windows.
Ok, so I ran ZA a few times with the 10/51 Earth shield, Crit, Lesser Healing Wave build and I have some interesting things to report. First, as usual I have only personal observations based on HPs, Mana usage and raid deaths to go on and don’t have the “hard” numbers to show how good/bad this build is. Second, in our guild I am one of the main healers, and consistently have been a tank healer so I have some experience in this roll already.
First, here is a break down of how I healed each fight in ZA.
Bear Boss – Chain heal focused on the two tanks with a LHW cast to catch up if the tanks have taken a large amount of damage, especially after the silence. Riptide then cast on the raid member who was charged to proc tidal waves.
Eagle Boss – Chain heal melee that are taking electrical damage. Riptide and LHW then cast on the raid members who are being dropped or attacked by birds. Chain heal then cast while the electrical storm is taking place to top off the raid.
Lynx Boss – Chain heal the tanks and Riptide and LHW the raid if hit with electrical damage. If the raid members are close enough, I would normally use chain heal on the raid but I like to get a couple of cast of quickly to get my focus back on the tanks.
Dragon Hawk Boss – LHW heal the main tank, riptide/LHW or chain heal the raid during fire damage based on raid member’s location and then chain heal those taking on the hatchers/birds. I then normally use LHW to top the raid off during happy fun ball time since the raid members are scattered at this point.
Hex Lord – LHW the tanks the chain heal and LHW the raid during spirit bolts. I try to start casting chain heal just before spirit bolts so I get one heal off just as the damage starts and for the tidal waves to proc so if I have to LHW someone who is near death I can. Otherwise I chain heal as normal.
Zul’Jin – Chain heal the tanks and raid for most damage through out the fight. The one spot this build shines is during the eagle phase (did I mention how much I hate the eagle phase?) Since the eagle phase requires so much moving around, the riptide and LHW combo make this part of the fight bearable. Keep in mind that you will have to heal yourself as you are healing the raid. The one thing you will need to look at is mana usage. This seems to be the one fight where I consistently have mana issues.
The first thing I noticed is with improved water shield, mana stream totem and the Totem of the Thunder Head, the mana returned from a crit on LHW makes this heal very viable not only on the main tank, but on any member of the raid that needs a quick heal. Granted a lot of this is based on luck of the dice roll and if you get a string of LHW without a crit your mana pool will start to drain pretty quickly, which it is why it is recommend to have a large mana pool for this build (roughly 12k un-buffed, at the lowest).
Another bonus I found was that after 3.0.3 went live, Riptide now procs tidal waves. This allows for you to top anyone off in the raid and then move to the tank as needed. This really helps the speed healing when people are not in range of chain heal.
One thing I did find annoying with this build though is the constant need to recharge water shield, which most of the time is not that bad, but when you need to cast it in the middle of a fight, the use of the global cool down might cause you to miss a heal when you need it the most.
Overall I am happy with this build for now. It seems to do the job very well at 70 and will probably do well for the next few levels, but from what I have read from those in the beta, this build and tactics may not scale well to the new end game. For now though, I will enjoy the ability to be a mobile healer for once.
After a few weeks of giving the new resto talents a good once over in our raids and from some excellent information from our friends over at Elitist Jerks, I have decided to give a new talent build a try.
Currently I am running the ever exciting 61 point resto talent build that can be found here 0/0/61.
Now, based on my personal experience and some interesting mathematical theory based on spell crit and lesser healing wave I have decided upon this build 0/10/51.
Here is the summary of the changes:
Dropped:
Healing Grace – Tanks and DPS are generating so much threat, I barely make a scratch on the agro meter, so for the first time as a Resto Shaman, this talent is going bye bye.
Healing Way – This was the talent that got axed cause I needed three more points =(
Cleanse Spirit/Natures Swiftness (still undecided actually) – One of these will have to go. I like the “Oh shit” button but I also like being able to de-curse. If it comes down to which one I use more, NS will be gone…well at least till I hit 71.
Ancestral Awakening – I have been under whelmed with this talent. It is nice to have that extra heal but I am not really sure how needed it will be. For now I will be dropping it and see how my ability to raid heal is impacted…if at all.
Talents Added:
Ancestral knowledge – The added intelligence is nice and this is the only good tier one enhancement talent for resto shaman.
Thundering Strike – This will add another 5% crit to the healing spells that stacks with the new healing model of crit stacking and lesser healing way with the LHW glyph.
This build is designed to get the most talent based spell crit (14%); this, along with the lesser healing way glyph/earth shield seems to makes the shaman a perfect tank healer with big fast heals without seriously impacting our ability to raid heal.
For the full run down, please go see Elitist Jerks discussion on the WotLK talents for all the math and theory. I plan on reporting my finding in the next week or so after some raid testing.
When I think of spell rotation, I normally think about a mage or a hunter stacking spells for max dps, but recently, my view has changed. I have found that there are spell rotations to be found in the realm of healing, especially in the world of the Resto Shaman.
Since the patch our spells and abilities seem to flow together much better than ever giving the Resto Shaman the ability to stack spells and talents to achieve a much more efficient means of healing than we have had before. This can be found in the current heal rotation that I have been using.
Spell Rotation:
Cast 1: Riptide – Target: Main Tank
While note the best HoT in game, it does fill a hole that the Resto Shamans have had for quiet some time (HoT and Insta-Cast Heal). I like to cast this on the main tank just a few seconds after he engages the target and gains enough agro. The small heal tops the tank off and the HoT stacked with Earth Shield can keep him topped off for some time if needed
Cast 2: Chain Heal – Target: Main Tank
After Riptide, I will cast chain heal off of the main tank within the 15 seconds of the HoT effect. This will allow me to cast a chain heal increased by 25% (from the Riptide bonus) which heals a large chunck of the tank and those around him.
Cast 3: Healing Wave or Lesser Healing Wave –Target: As needed
Assuming you have taking Tidal Waves, after you cast the chain heal you will have the ability to cast either a LWH or HW spell 30% along with a bonus of healing affect of 20%(HW) or 10%(LHW). I personally love tidal waves. Anything that will allow me to cast my heals faster is a god send since my only complaint I have had as a Resto Shaman has been the time it takes me to cast my bigger heals.
So there you have it, a Resto Shaman Spell rotation. Keep in mind that you don’t need to cast all three spells. You can use two of the three as long as you match Riptide to Chain Heal or Chain Heal to HW or LHW.
AoE Raid Damage: Riptide > Chain Heal: Cast Riptide on the person taking the most damage and then cast Chain Heal to boost your Ch by the 25%. Pick another target and repeat. You will find that the raid HP gets filled much faster now. This has made healing raid damage such as Netherspite of the Dragon Hawk much easier to manage.
Single Target Damage: Chain Heal > HW: Use Chain Heal as normal and then cast HW on the tank when needed. The 30% reduction is cast time makes reaction time to damage much better and has made my tanks less nervous.
Note: These findings are based on common sense and practical use in the raid situation. I have not run any numbers and I haven’t done any extension theory crafting but I have found that these rotations have made my life and the life of my raid group much easier.
Like most, I am excited that we are getting patch 3.0 in the coming weeks, but with it brings questions and uncertainty. With the introduction of the new talents trees, the changes to spell power are almost guaranteed to be included as well as the down ranking penalties. How these will affect the current game play in the realm of BC is yet to be seen, but preparation for these changes is needed.
I am a creature of habit. I had set up my healing rotation after my first couple of weeks of raiding and haven’t made any significant changes since. I use clique and a multi-button mouse with the following set up.
Shift-Left Click: Healing Wave Rank 8
Shift-Right Click: Healing Wave Rank 12
Shift-Side Button One: Chain Heal Rank 2
Shift-Side Button Two: Chain Heal Rank 4
Shift-Scroll Wheel: Earth Shield Rank 3
The majority of my healing is done with Rank 8 Healing Wave and Rank 2 Chain Heal leaving the big heals for boss fights or large amounts of raid wide damage. Come patch 3.0 (assuming down ranking penalties are included) the healing set up probably will be as follows.
Shift-Left Click: Chain Heal Rank 4
Shift-Right Click: Healing Wave Rank 12
Shift-Side Button One: Lesser Healing Wave Rank 7
Shift-Side Button Two: Undecided, possibly Natures Swiftness
Shift-Scroll Wheel: Earth Shield Rank 3
I foresee now that Chain Heal Rank 4 will be my primary heal with Healing Wave Rank 12 as the “big” heal for the boss fights. I’m still not sold on LHW though, even with Tidal Wave, but as Shaman healing moves more to being more crit dependant, LHW might find a home in my arsenal again.
This is not a bug.
In the latest WotLK beta push, we made a large change to the mana cost of spells.
All player spells now cost a percentage of base mana rather than a fixed cost. Base mana is a special value determined by the player’s level and class, regardless of any effects or items that increase intellect. It is the size of a player’s mana pool if the player has zero intellect.
This change was made primarily to prevent downranking, as it’s a technique that was never quite intended. Rather than continue to find ways to penalize players for casting low-rank spells, we decided to essentially make doing so obsolete. If rank 5 and rank 6 of a spell cost the same amount of mana, but rank 6 does more damage/healing, then there is no reason to consider casting rank 5.
So, each spell line (eg. Frostbolt, Shadowbolt, Greater Heal, Rejuvenation, etc.) has a fixed percentage of base mana that it costs for most of its ranks. That means each time a player gains a level the cost will go up some. The percentages were picked to attempt to keep the costs relatively similar to what they are currently in World of Warcraft. For most spells, that percentage will drop some when the player receives their highest-rank spell in existing Burning Crusade content. This was done to better fit the existing cost curve, and to keep the mana cost for level 70 players as close as possible to existing costs. Level 70 characters will see most of their maximum rank spells change in cost slightly up or down, but not by significant amounts.
We anticipate there being some balance concerns due to this change, and our development staff will be ready to implement new spells, abilities, or talents to resolve those issues as the testing process continues.
Zarhym
Why I dont like this:
- No more spaming Rank 1 HW to proc Ancestral Healing before a boss fight.
- No more spamming Rank 1 HW to fill up the Vial of the Sunwell to it’s full 20 charges.
- No more Rank 2 Chail Heal to quickly top of the raid group.
- No more Rank 4 Chain Heal or Rank 8 Healing Wave to sufficently heal a target with a managable and efficent mana cost.
Why I like this:
- I will let you know when I think of one.
Now, I am not in the beta and I am not familiar with the new spell mechanics, but coming from an SUV of mana efficeny that does all he can to avoid being OOM on the last 5% of a encounter I am a bit worried. This, on top of the in again out again potion sickness keeping one from chain chugging mana pots is making me wonder where my mana is going to come from. Matticus has some thoughts, but he is much more positive than I am.
