HW vs. LHW

Patch 3.0.8. brought changes to both improved water shield and healing wave, and thus LHW spamming is now less attractive and HW spamming might now be an option. I haven’t yet seen any numbers so I’ll do some quick napkin math. I’m not the guy how creates spreadsheets or who’s a genius in math so please do correct me if you find any mistakes.

Some numbers are taken from Daidalos’ Spreadsheet, Formulas used come from EJ.

Edit 5.6.09: This numbers refer to the task being steady single target healing = tank healing. I hope I don’t have to explain why LHW is always superior for spot healing.

To spare my some math I used the numbers from Daidolos’ healing calculations mentioned above. Our Shaman sports the following Stats:

957 INT, 2057 SP, 400 Haste and 24% crit

Modifiers from Tidal waves and 4pcT7 are already included in the math. Crit heals are included as well. 400 Haste change the cast time from HW to 2.23 s and to 1.34 in the case of LHW.

HW heals for an average of 9558 health, that’s a HPM of 9.16 and a HPS of 4290
LHW heals for an average of 4676, HPM is 7.47, HPS 3498

If we take improved water shield into the equation, HPM changes. Mana cost for HW is 1044, for LHW it is 626. An IWS proc with 3/3 IS and 2pcT7 returns 535 Mana (Source). Every HW crit consumes an WS orb, 60% of LHW crits consume a WS orb. If we adapt mana costs with IWS, the average cost for HW is now 915 and 549 for LHW.

With IWS HPM of HW goes up to 10.45, LHW HPM is 8.52. HPS stays roughly the same, of course it goes down a little bit because of GCD we have to waste for recasting WS.

Let’s now add the biggest modifiers for HW and LHW, that would be Healing way and the Glyph of Lesser Healing Wave. New values we get are:

HW avg. healing 11278 health, HPM of 12.33 and a HPS of 5058 (or 7230 with TW buff up)

LHW heals for an average of 5611, HPM is 10.22, HPS 4187 (same value with TW buff up)

The additional 30% cast time reduction from Tidal waves buff really tune up the HPS of HW, LHW on the other hand is global cooldown limited. And even if actual cast time of LHW is very short, HPS won’t get better because you can cast only one LHW every global cooldown, which sadly isn’t modified by Tidal Waves.

The last thing of interest is how well we can spam both spells. I’ll do that with seconds until oom for both spells. We completely ignore mana regen mechanics and just look at how many spells our sample shaman can cast until his mana pool (20187 mana) is empty.

For HW that is 49 seconds or 35 seconds if TW buff would be up all the time

For LHW that is 49 seconds as well. With TW buff up that remains 49 seconds, because we cast one LHW every global cooldown, no matter how fast our LHW might be.

Conclusion: HW at this point is superior in terms of HPS and HPM compared to LHW. If we add the LHW glyph and have an ES on our healing target, HPM of LHW is better with slightly worse HPS. With skilled 3/3 Healing way, HW is the better choice again in every aspect. The Tidal waves buff, procced by Riptide or CH, is an additional big boost to HW HPS, while LHW HPS is unaffected by Tidal waves due to cast limitation of the global cooldown (LHW landing fast on the target of course still has its benefits). If we compare longevity of the two spells, both are surprisingly equal and point of oom comes after 49 seconds for both, mana regen mechanics excluded. In a real healing situation though, tidal waves has a high uptime if we use chainheal and/or riptide. In this case we still can cast LHW for a long time while we run oom much faster with TW hastened HW, of course HW provides a much higher HPS in this situation.

My personal conclusion is that I should give HW single target healing a try with 3/3 healing way. If my math is right I can spam HW without TW buff up exactly as long as I can spam LHW. I even have to possibility to pump up my HPS with the TW buff. The problem I see is that I might use chainheal and riptide pretty often in single target healing situations as well, and with TW buff up I burn through my mana much faster with HW spamming.

Addendum: Ancestral Awakening and Earthliving are not included. But most importantly, Totem of Misery is not included in this calculations. This will further improve HPM of HW. A Totem for LHW is still not available unless you have a 2030 Arena Rating.