It all comes back to haste

If I had to recommend one source of information to any resto shaman, it would be the Theorycrafting Think Tank entry Shaman: Restoration. Skyhoof, Daidalos and Stassart do a absolutely terrific job at providing a complete shaman healing guide, always up to date, always adapting to new patches and new insight into resto shaman healing.

One of the newer additions to this splendid guide are up-to-date HEP values. HEP values are great to give a rough direction for gearing you toon, gemming and choosing glyphs. They don’t replace rearranging gear for specific fights and using common sense though.

The HEP values I used to determine T7 BiS gear, were more or less stat weights from T6 content just very roughly adapted to WotLK mechanics, which means high HEP values for INT (INT=7, SP=7, MP5=10 Haste=4, Crit=3), those were good stats, mainly for gearing up and getting a decent amount of mana regen through INT. In my T8 BiS post, I used shaman_hep for the first time. An incredibly good tool, which spits out HEP values for gearing, glyphs and tier bonuses if you give it a combat log to chew on. The HEP values at that point were very balanced (INT=0.8, SP=1, MP5=0.9, Haste=0.6, Crit=0.7). We went a little bit away from mana regen stats and shifted towards throughput (SP+crit) as well as mana regen through crit. Haste wasn’t as good, because 1) Tidal Waves would still haste our LHW, pushing our LHW under the GCD, thus LHW didn’t profit too much from haste 2) CH wasn’t just as good as it now, post 3.2.

After 3.2, CH got a lot better. Crit is still great but has gotten worse in relation to haste, especially now with Tidal Waves already adding such a huge crit boost to our LHWs. T8 Bonus offered a lot of haste for Chain Heal, T9 doesn’t, which makes haste even more valuable. So, Skyhoof looked at many shaman_hep reports by excellent players at came to new HEP values:

(INT=0.6, SP=1, MP5=1, Haste=1.5, Crit=0.8)

I don’t think it is hard to see why INT has dropped in its value: All of us resto shaman, running around in 232+ gear, we just already have tons of INT on our gear. No need to gem for it. But why has haste become so valuable? Some points I have already mentioned: Chain Heal is great again, we loose a lot of haste with our 4pcT8 bonus. This isn’t the whole truth though. And it doesn’t explain the huge difference between SP and haste, which are both throughput stats.

The explanation is quite simple though, it’s based in the calculation of HEP values with shaman_hep. In the actual content, we produce a lot overheal. Overheal doesn’t profit from spellpower. Crit producing overheal isn’t doing a lot good either. Mathematically, haste would in this scenario still greatly increase our output, while a lot of heal generated from SP would be lost on overheal.

What does that mean for us?

Even if the superiority of haste is based on a mathematical model, I’m convinced it’s our best stat at this point. We still need somewhat balanced gear, we still need a good baseline mana regen, but when it come to throughput, haste is the way to go. Chainheal works great with a lot of haste, LHW works great with haste post 3.2 (up to the point where casttime of LHW=1 sec=GCD). I personally will start gemming for haste as soon as I get a second piece of 245 T9 gear, until then I’ll stick with 4pcT8. As soon as I’m get to the region of 800-1000ish haste, the HEP ratings might need a second look.

The only thing I was still wondering about, would be stat weights in a very single target heavy environment. So I ran shaman_hep with combat logs of Faction Champion Heroic (RT LHW-spamage) and Twins Heroic (I spammed LHW RT on soakers). To my surprise, haste was still rated very high (1.72), crit came very close to SP (0.98) and INT value increased slightly (0.78). So even if you tank or spot heal a lot, haste still is the best throughput stat. INT gets more important in single target healing situations where a lot of throughput is needed, but is  a stat we can control very nicely with trinkets.

What does that mean in practice?

Keep an eye open for haste heavy gear. Don’t ditch every 219 or 226 piece just yet before closely inspecting it. Pulsing Spellshield and Voice of Reason are still excellent shields, both better than Pride of the Kor’kron from Anub’arak10. Belt of the Fallen Wyrm is still an excellent belt and beats most of TotC10/25 mail belts, for a decent mail update you’d have to defeat Northrend Beasts25 on Heroic mode.

Also, don’t forget to keep an eye on Elemental Gear. Nobundo’s Helm of Triumph is the best Resto Headpiece AND the best choice for a non 245-T9 piece. If you’re in my situation with 4pcT8 but without T8 shoulders, Thrall’s Shoulderpads of Conquest are a great an cheap (30 Emblem of Triumph) upgrade.

You can also welcome your new best friends, Quick King’s Amber, Reckless Ametrine and Energized Eye of Zul as well as buff food providing +40 haste (Very Burnt Worg and Imperial Manta Steak).

GuildOx link for EJ HEP can be found over here. If you are still low on haste, you can set the value of haste to 1.7, most of my shaman_hep reports suggest a value between 1.6 and 1.75.