The Basics of 4.2 for Resto Shaman

With 4.2 comes a lot of change for us.  I discussed my thoughts regarding the T12 set bonuses (you can read that here), but in this post we are going to delve into all the other juicy stuff: what is being reworked, how that’s going to affect our healing game, and my overall thoughts on them.  I’ll skip the Enhance/Ele changes, ’cause that’s not what I want to talk about (the ones in bold, below, are what I will be discussing).

General

• All healing critical strikes now heal for 2 times a normal heal (+100%), up from 1.5 times a normal heal (+50%).

Shaman

• Lightning Shield and Water Shield can no longer be dispelled.
• Unleash Elements is now in the Nature school, and thus can no longer be used if a shaman’s Nature school has been locked out.
• Water Shield has had its internal cooldown reduced to 3.5 seconds, once again matching other shields. The amount of mana restored when Water Shield procs has been reduced by 50%.

Restoration

• Improved Water Shield has been redesigned and renamed Resurgence. When Water Shield is active, Resurgence causes critical direct heals to restore mana (Resurgence rank 2 is roughly equal to 150% of the old Improved Water Shield value when a Healing Wave or Greater Healing Wave critically hits, and scaled down accordingly for faster or multi-target spells).
• Mana Tide now grants 200% of the caster’s Spirit, down from 400%
• Healing Surge healing has been reduced by 20%, from [ 5605 - 6404 ] to [ 4484 - 5122 ] (I discussed this recent change in this post)

The first thing we look at is the Critical Hit change.  We’ve got a 50% increase in store for us from what we’re used to seeing on critical heals, and that’s pretty awesome.  However, there are plenty of things to be taken into consideration before you start reforging anything and everything to Crit.  First and foremost is the usefulness of your other stats.

***I will forewarn you, I will not be telling you what to stack, and how much of it.  This is a discussion and thought process post, and hopefully it will help in that it will bring about a better understanding of these changes and prompt you to think about what you will be doing in regards to these changes.  These are not listed in order of importance; that is left for you to decide.***

Haste Rating

As we progress into the Firelands, T12 gear, and better gear all around, it is going to be much more feasible to reach the second haste breakpoint — 2005 Haste Rating – for some added ticks on Riptide (you can read about these breakpoints, among other things, in this post at Elitist Jerks).  Getting to that next breakpoint will be something that I think most people are going to be looking at hitting, myself included.  There are various ratings you will need in order to add ticks to your other spells, so you would have to take a look at each of those and decide if it is something that is attainable for you, and whether or not you want to invest your time in doing it.

Mastery Rating (“Deep Healing“)

Another big stat we worry about is Mastery.  There is an excellent article written by Vixsin over at Life in Group 5, that you can read here, that goes over a whole bunch of nitty, gritty number crunching (the stuff I’m really bad at figuring out) regarding the Crit vs. Mastery debacle for 4.2.  Very well written and, after all of the fancy charts and algebraic equations, it’s put into simpler terms for those of us who are not quite as savvy on those matters.  The article talks about the health thresholds where Mastery does better than Crit, and visa versa, which is where the toss up between these two stats comes into play and where some arguments can be made against either of the two.  Always an excellent resource to check out, and highly recommended.

But as I’ve said before, I’ve always been a fan of our Mastery and I’ve always stacked for it and made use of it from the get go.  I don’t want to dip too far below what I currently have ’cause I’ve seen it work miracles when I’m spot healing tanks from time to time, not to mention the amazing group healing I can put out on damage intensive fights.  I can easily see where a good balance between the two would make for some killer heals … our Mastery paired with a critical heal that will hit for an extra 100%?  Delicious.  I heal 25 man Heroic raids, so finding the perfect balance between these major stats will vary for myself from that of someone healing 10 man normals, but I will definitely be looking at stacking some more Crit in 4.2 for a plethora of reasons, as I imagine many others will be doing as well.

Spirit/Mana Regeneration

That brings me to the next stat that opens up a whole’ nother can of worms:  Spirit.  What a troublesome one this will be!  There are a lot of things to take into consideration for this stat based on how our mana regeneration tools are being reconfigured, and I would love to see someone write up a fully detailed article comparing the numbers between each (let me know if you find a well written one lurking around out there!).  So, the three things to look at compared against straight up Spirit: the nerf to Mana Tide Totem, Water Shield and it’s reconstruction, the new talent “Resurgence” that is taking the place of “Improved Water Shield”, and our T12 two piece set bonus.

Mana Tide Totem

With the changes to Mana Tide Totem, it kind of feels like we just got kicked in the nuts.  Personally, I have never felt the need to stack a metric ass ton of Spirit because my totem does just fine with what I have, and that leaves me the option to stack other stats, like Mastery and Crit.  However, I know that there are plenty of Shaman out there (especially for 10 mans) that are heavily relied upon by their raid group to provide a good avenue of mana regeneration for them, and this nerf will affect them the hardest.  I think that after taking a look at the changes as a whole, it’s clear that our ability to provide good mana regen for others will be less than desirable, but our personal mana regen will be a lot better.  Finding the balance for personal and group needs will vary from player to player.

Water Shield/Resurgence

Kind of like another kick in the crotch, the proc effect has been reduced by 50%.  When Water Shield procs (which only happens when you take damage), you will only gain 758 mana, down from 1416 — keep in mind that they have not touched — so far — the passive mana regen you receive from just having Water Shield active.  This may seem like it’s the end of the world, but they are counteracting this with “Resurgence”, previously known as “Improved Water Shield”.

This is what the 2/2 Improved Water Shield talent currently does:

• You have a 100% chance to instantly gain mana as if you consumed a Water Shield Orb when you gain a critical effect from your Healing Wave, Greater Healing Wave, or Riptide spells, a 60% chance when you gain a critical effect from your Healing Surge spell, and a 30% chance when you gain a critical effect from your Chain Heal spell.

Once Improved Water Shield has been converted to Resurgence, this is what the talent will look like:

• Improved Water Shield has been redesigned and renamed Resurgence. When Water Shield is active, Resurgence causes critical direct heals to restore mana (Resurgence rank 2 is roughly equal to 150% of the old Improved Water Shield value when a Healing Wave or Greater Healing Wave critically hits, and scaled down accordingly for faster or multi-target spells).

In simpler and more matter of facts terms and numbers, this is what you will be seeing after it’s been changed to Resurgence in 4.2 (information found on the PTR):

• While Water Shield is active, you recover mana when your direct healing spells have a critical effect.  You regain 2293 mana from a Healing Wave or Greater Healing Wave critical, 1376 mana from a Healing Surge, Riptide, or Unleash Life critical, and 764 mana from a Chain Heal critical.

So, looking at all of these things together, we can summarize that both GHW and HW will be restoring more mana to us (exactly 877 more mana) than the original workings of Water Shield and it’s soon-to-be former incarnation of improvement.  We will be losing 40 mana restoration from any HS, RT and Unleash Life criticals, and we will be losing 652 mana restoration from any Chain Heal crits (this is counting only ONE heal on the initial target, no bounces) once this has been changed to Resurgence.  Let’s take a look at the loses and the gains:

Just from the totals of the spells themselves, if we were to cast one of each and they all were a critical, we would technically be coming out ahead with the whole change to Water Shield’s respective talent.  In reality, a lot of this is greatly dependent upon what spells you use most often, how often they crit, what your gear and stats look like … so you could more literally be coming out on the bottom, depending on on those personal (dis)advantages.

I am assigned to raid heal, but often times I am also asked to spot heal a tank.  Having this scenario opens me up to use GHW a bit more often than I normally would.  I already make use of Healing Wave on various raiders over the course of a fight, and the loss in Riptide mana regen from IWS isn’t a huge deal considering the large gain I will be receiving from using  the T12 two set bonus (discussed next).

Although Chain Heal looks to be a significant loss, each bounced heal that crits will restore 764 mana to you, not just the initial target’s heal.  Paired with the idea that critical strike rating will become more important for us, this should be a significant gain in the long run.

Tier Set Bonuses

The last one to take into consideration (for all of you raiders out there) is the T12 two piece set bonus:

• Your periodic healing from Riptide has a 40% chance to restore 1% of your base mana each time it heals a target.

The chart shown previously shows we have a very small loss of mana regeneration for Riptide critical heals when Improved Water Shield gets turned into Resurgence, but this set bonus — I think — will help to make up for this, mainly due to the fact that this has the chance to proc off of each tick of Riptide, not just the initial hit.  If you keep Riptide up on multiple targets, you are at the correct haste breakpoints, and you are glyphed for it … I think you will see a very nice increase in your combat mana regen.

Conclusions

Mastery will typically give you more healing for your mana (known as “HPM” = Heals Per Mana), so that’s a gain right there that you can’t visibly see or track down in log parses as far as “saved” mana goes.  I say this because you are still spending the same amount of mana to cast that heal, but you are getting more out of it, thus not needing to cast quite as many heals to keep your target(s) up, and therefore “saving” mana.

Critical Strike Rating will up your chances of having Resurgence proc, plus the added bonus of a bigger heal that is, again, more HPM and one of those invisible gains.  Spirit will obviously give you constant mana regeneration, as well as help out your Mana Tide Totem, and Haste – combined with glyphed Riptide and your 2 set bonus of T12 – will allow you even more chances for mana restoration, as well as added ticks on a few spells if you go for the other breakpoints.

I’ve always been a firm believer that it’s not always all about one stat, and one stat alone.  It’s about looking at how all of these will ultimately affect your play, your output, your gains, and how you can balance each of these to create a harmonious blend for healing.  Most people hate change and sometimes I do, too; but for this, I find it to be a fun, new challenge for myself with figuring out how everything intricately works together, and learning how to stack them just so to make my character the best that she can be.

Again, this post is not here to tell you what stats to stack, how much of each, and how you should go about doing all of this via gear, gemming, enchanting and reforging.  I often like to “ponder out loud”, and this here blog is an excellent avenue to do such things regarding the game and its ever-changing ways.  I find that I retain information and learn a bit better when I have written down my thought process and ideas about what I’ve come across, and it’s still very much a learning process right now given how new these changes are and how they could change yet.

I like to have a battle plan, and I encourage people to work out what theirs will be.  Do you have a plan for how you will handle your class changes?  Are you happy or frustrated with what is coming in 4.2 regarding your class?  How will these changes affect your play style, if at all?