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The people who are supporting it with numbers are showing that its slightly better than 2xChain heal if you give the riptide 3 seconds to tick before the chain heal hits.
Yes, but that means you CAN'T cast chain heal on the tank just for the sake of maximizing riptide's efficiency. I just don't see why they didn't change riptide to avoid this. There are so many ways to improve the efficiency without going OP.
1. The HoT would allow chain heal to be buffed but without consuming the HoT. Now, they could keep the bonus the same or decrease it to a 10% bonus instead or something to balance it out, but this would at least allow riptide to be efficient without having to "hold back" on heals.
2. Have the bonus to chain heal be a buff given to the caster for the next chain heal. This would allow the same mechanic but without consuming the HoT.
3. Have it work more like swiftmend so that the remaining HoT "surges" when chain heal is cast on the target.
This isn't even considering all of the OTHER cool effects they could do such as guaranteed earthliving from riptide or spreading the HoT down chain heal. Causing single target heals to literally splash off the target if the HoT is applied or any other number of interesting cool effects. Instead we got an instant, poor scaling, regrowth that loses the hot for a mediocre bonus thus making the original heal less mana efficient.
From your own link:
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Also don't forget that you can CH off the Riptide effect after 3 ticks for no loss of healing, and after 4 ticks you've gain an extra 500 heal.
3 ticks = 9 seconds. So... yes, if you cast chain heal once every 9 seconds, then Riptide > chain heal IS better but when are also concerned about hpm and hps chain heal x2 is better.
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This backs up my anecdotal evidence on Kil'Jaeden where my spell selection of pure CH spam with Riptide on every available cooldown has proved far superior to the other shaman experimenting with LHW and HW with Tidal Waves.
His evidence is the single fight that is THE ABSOLUTE WORST for chain heal. LHW spam > CH on this fight. Of course Riptide + chain heal is phenomenal... you riptide on people that have a dot (thereby countering the dot), then use mana efficient and boosted chain heal once the dot on them has done enough damage to warrant casting again. It's also a HIGHLY mobile fight thereby boosting its effectiveness. I'd still argue Riptide + LHW is better for that fight simply because of hps since hpm isn't an issue on the fight thanks to the dragons.