Restoration, a new approach

[whyabadi]

First of all I would like to congratulate you all on your latest heroic kill. Well done!
With this thread I aim to start a more in depth discussion on how restoration shamans can be effective healers by investigating new builds.
I have been testing a Unleashed Life/Focused Insight heavy mastery build or the saving power build and I would like to hear the opinions of experienced shamans who see beyond the meters and understand the merits of such build in challenging encounters.

Basically, this style relies on Tidal Waves' enhanced Healing Surges combined with Unleashed Life and Focused Insight. This unusual play style can be extremely efficient because of the nature of our mastery. Deep Healing encourages the use of big heals over small spammed ones because the bonus is reduced as the target's current hp goes up.

Why Healing Surge and not Greater Healing Wave then?
For many reasons. The first being that with Tidal Waves, Healing Surge has very similar HPM to GHW's taking into account Improved Water Shield talent. Another reason is the extra 30% critical chance Healing Surge has with Tidal Waves. This makes Ancestral Awakening more likely to trigger which further emphasizes the saving power of this style. The third reason is that GHW is slower even with Tidal Waves and you will see why this is important soon.

But my shocks will miss on bosses?
Yes they would unless of course you take the Elemental Precision talent. Two points are enough with the current gear, and we might be able to drop one point in a few tiers. The points in the elemental tree are not exactly wasted. You will have Acuity and Convection which leads me to my next point...

Telluric Currents!
This is why Healing Surge wins over GHW; it gives you more time to be able to take advantage of Telluric Currents. Blizzard has announced however that Telluric Currents is not working exactly how they intended, but let's cross the bridge when we get to it.

Deep Healing is the key!
Yes, our mastery is why such build can be effective. It encourages one-shot heals over spammed ones and so does Tidal Waves. This style is more versatile than it looks. With high mastery, Chain Heal becomes even smarter. With the smart nature of Chain Heal you can also use it instead of Healing Surge to stabilize the health levels of your group or raid which is a nice combo together with a Prayer of Healing spamming holy priest.

What stats, then, complement this healing style?
You will need to avoid haste. Int and crit are the best for such style, but stacking mastery won't leave much room for the other secondary stats. A good balance of int and mastery needs to be maintained however.

Where does this unusual style shine?
In many situations this build can be utilized to provide wotlk-disc-priest-like saving power. For example, this build works with tank healing with Nature's Blessing further improving your heal bombs. High movement encounters do not hinder this play style either; A shock on the move followed by a Healing Surge allow for great mobility which more than makes up for Ancestral Swiftness.

What's the catch?
A build based on heavy use of shocks will suffer the same limitations; namely the short range. Also, this build requires many talents to be effective leaving little room for the utility ones.

Is that all?
Nope. While I am not sure if this is intended, but if you cast a Riptide immediately after the enhanced Healing Surge, Riptide will get the entire bonus, at least the instant portion of it while the hot portion only benefiting from Unleashed Life. It's not uncommon, with this healing style, to see 17-20k Riptide crits!
The fact that you are hit capped, or close to it, will improve your other duties as well; Hex, Wind Shear, and Purge.

Here is how the build looks like:
http://www.wowhead.com/talent#hG00bZbZcGfMcdcRuo
You can take the point from Blessing of the Eternals and get Nature's Swiftness.
Glyphs:
Pick any combination of the following 5 glyphs:
Earth Shield, Water shield, Earthliving, Riptide, Shocking
I know it is shocking that I listed the glyph of Shocking there, but it can be crucial in some high mobility encounters.

[Mímir]

This seems to be a very useful build for big spike dmg fights, but the one issue I see with this is how durable it would be. Whenever I make and try new builds I always refer to H Lk, if it can deal with big tank spike damage, big aoe from spirits/phase transitions and mobility. I can see how this can put out big healing quick but I dont see its practicality over most fights(i see how this would only be used for certain fights) keeping with the generic haste and standard build would seem to be more benefital to all aspects of a fight over the big burst heals of this build. Ill have to try this first hand to see if its actually a "durable" build.

[whyabadi]

With this build you will be casting fewer bigger heals with high hpm.
I am still experimenting with it and it is certainly harder to play than the usual style. When using that style I have two modes, a safe one where I play normally with HW/CH and an emergency one where I use enhanced HSs.
I am not sure if it is the style that is working for me or simply the excess amount of mastery I had.

[Nastiest]

One issue I am curious about is taking convection when you're using focused insight to conserve mana. If you reduce the mana cost of the shock, the mana saved on the following heal is also reduced.

[Kyy]

No offense but I don't find this play style to be anywhere near optimal specially for 25man raiding. Shamans strength is not spot healing or big heals.

[whyabadi]

One issue I am curious about is taking convection when you're using focused insight to conserve mana. If you reduce the mana cost of the shock, the mana saved on the following heal is also reduced.

So is the mana used on the shock itself. Focused Insight reduces the mana cost of your heal by a flat value equal to 75% of the mana cost of the shock. Whatever mana you spent on the shock, you would get 75% of it back and a 30% increase to your next heal. Just think about it for a minute and you will figure it out.

No offense but I don't find this play style to be anywhere near optimal specially for 25man raiding. Shamans strength is not spot healing or big heals.

No it's not, not for 25man raiding. Not much is going on for 25man raiding for a resto shaman anyway; good placement and timing of Healing Rain is mostly what it is about.
Deep Healing and Greater Healing Wave have been buffed in 4.0.6. This makes things a bit more interesting.
I am playing my disc priest more now, but when 4.0.6 hits I will be testing this style again on my shaman.

[Nastiest]

One issue I am curious about is taking convection when you're using focused insight to conserve mana. If you reduce the mana cost of the shock, the mana saved on the following heal is also reduced.

So is the mana used on the shock itself. Focused Insight reduces the mana cost of your heal by a flat value equal to 75% of the mana cost of the shock. Whatever mana you spent on the shock, you would get 75% of it back and a 30% increase to your next heal. Just think about it for a minute and you will figure it out.

I'm at work so I wanted to keep it easy and figured 4k for a flame shock and 10k for healing rain (although I know they're both different in game). I used healing rain just because...but the principle remains the same regardless of healing spell cast.

At raw vaules (no convection), if I spend 4k on a shock, I reduce my healing rain down to 7k (due to the focused insight talent). Adding the 1k back into the equation (the other 25%), I net an 8k Healing Rain.

Same numbers with convection: Shock is now 10% reduced, costing 3.6k mana, saving 2.7k mana on the healing rain. This makes it a raw 7.3k cost. Adding back the 900 mana from the 25% not saved, I net an 8.2k healing rain.

I wouldn't use convection. I would instead take 2 points in concussion to get you down to elemental precision. This way, you net lower healing costs (as illustrated by my above example), and you also gain more mana for each landed LB cast.

[whyabadi]

At raw vaules (no convection), if I spend 4k on a shock, I reduce my healing rain down to 7k (due to the focused insight talent). Adding the 1k back into the equation (the other 25%), I net an 8k Healing Rain.

What about the 4k you spent on the shock in the first place?

Same numbers with convection: Shock is now 10% reduced, costing 3.6k mana, saving 2.7k mana on the healing rain. This makes it a raw 7.3k cost. Adding back the 900 mana from the 25% not saved, I net an 8.2k healing rain.

The net healing spell cost is the original cost of that spell plus 25% of the shock cost,
or, it is the healing spell cost after reduction plus the original shock cost.
Without Convection. You spend 4000 on the shock, and 7000 on healing rain after the FI reduction. Total mana spent: 11000.
With Convection. You spend 3600 on the shock, and 7300 on healing rain after the FI reduction. Total mana spent: 10900.

[whyabadi]

http://i970.photobucket.com/albums/ae18 ... ow/ghw.jpg
That would be 100k crit. That cannot be duplicated in normal situations, but that's between 9-12 hpm depending on your crit chance. You can achieve 50-70% of that normally in a raid every 15 seconds or around 40-50% of it every 6 seconds.