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Draenei! We missed you!!! Hope everything's all right =).

The two builds that Cestin put up are close to what I use. Personally, I pick up Imp. Rein instead of Tidal Force (I don't have issues with crit or healing, so I'd rather have the ability to pop back up sooner instead... of course, other people have their preference).

But other than that one point there and the one point in Ancestral healing being put into Rein, the rest are the same for me.

You'll start getting into the hang of things again. I've just recently started to pick my rogue back up and it's slowly coming back to me.

Good luck and Welcome back!

Awakening procs off Riptide also.

Not that much (around 1.2k) but in most case still better then the armor increase. I usually heal the raid, most of the damage comes from aoe spell damage which is not mitigated by armor. sure the mage in my party now got 25% more armor but it's not gonna change anything when he gets hit by the next frost bolt on KT.

If I heal the main tank then I guess the armor increase is a pretty good buff but you'll be using your healing wave a lot more making awakening that much more useful also.


In the end, you can take both or either one. It shouldn't stop you from doing your job efficiently either way.

Personally I would get both and drop the points in elemental weapons. The bonus to earthliving weapon doesn't really scale well with higher SP.

Do you just ignore Tidal Waves altogether? We have that nifty new Haste buff thingy, seen it ever? Plus 20% more on HW and 10% on LHW.

We're not just Brain Heal spam-bots anymore Gaudion. If you want to do that use an Unrelenting Storm spec.

I'm not exactly sure why Tidal Waves is now relative to this discussion.


Whereas I personally would take Elemental Weapons and Ancestral Healing both before I would ever take Ancestral Awakening (unless it's a PvP build). That's all I'm saying. Dreinai's an intelligent enough girl, I'm sure she'll eventually arrive at a conclusion herself. But until then, I consider it somewhat of an obligation to advise against what I consider a very bad talent to someone who, by self-profession, doesn't know any better.


I've cleared Sapphiron with the highest total healing done (not bragging here, anyone on raid-healing duty on that particular fight sure as hell should be on top), 87% of decurses done, and still managed to keep Earth Shield and Riptide active on the tank for the better part of all phase ones.

For that matter, you complain about being unable to throw out a Riptide, but then how and when exactly are you finding the time to cast Lesser Healing Wave or Healing Wave?

And one more thing as far as Saph is concerned: Frost Aura, Chill, and Drain Life are certainly dangerous mechanics, but so is his melee. He's got the most dangerous melee output in Naxx if you don't count Patchwerk's Hatefuls.


It's been pretty well established that Riptide-to-Chain Heal is almost a complete waste of... well, everything. You're generally better off just casting two Chain Heals back-to-back. The bonus from Riptide can be nice when you're catching the HoT on the tail end right before it disappears, but using it as a boost to Chain Heal is just not efficient healing.

In any case... this has gotten a little out of hand. I can appreciate the fact that we've obviously got different playstyles and I think we've both sufficiently voices our points on the matter, so I'll just leave it here and let Draenei take from it what she will.

Edited, Mar 25th 2009 7:30pm by Gaudion

Yes, my apologies about that. My quote boxes got lost when I was shuffling that post around, it seems.

Ok, look junior... I think it's cute that you consider me to be an old, "Brain Heal" spamming relic. But you couldn't be further from the mark.


This is exactly the same kind of logic that makes Enhancement Shaman put Flametongue on a slow off-hand. They don't know any better but, hey! Lava Lash gets bonus damage from Flametongue, so let's slap it on our off-hand and go to town. Nevermind that it decreases their overall DPS.

The smart Shaman player will actually make reasoned judgements about his gear, talents, and spells, instead of just blindly fumbling around in the dark hitting every button Blizzard has given him to press.

So let's get right to it, shall we?

Tidal Waves is great. When you're tank healing or in a five-man instance. But in a raid? Shaman are poorer single-target healers than the other three healers in the game but a strong raid healer. So if you're going to have a Resto Shaman in the raid, efficient resource management should always have them raid healing.

Now, you tell me, sport. What good does Tidal Waves, Lesser Healing Wave, Healing Wave, and Riptide do you when you're responsible for healing the AoE damage taken by up to ten people? The correct answer is, "Close to none." You can squeeze some use out of Riptide by throwing it up on the tank or off-tank, and I do, constantly. But unless fewer then two people are hurt, there is simply no reason, old school, new school, or any other school, to cast anything other than Chain Heal. It's simply more efficient in terms of mana cost, time cost, and healing delivered.

So where does that leave Ancestral Awakening if you won't even be casting the spells it can proc off of if more than one person is hurt? And if only one target is getting hurt, what's the point of an Ancestral Awakening proc? Well, if you're looking to drive up your overhealing, this would be one surefire way to do it.

As I said... I did my time with Ancestral Awakening and just found it to be pure garbage. If you want to convince me or anyone else that Ancestral Awakening is a good talent, tiger, you're gonna have to do a lot better than, "Just because it's there."