Riptide, MT Healing, and You!
A few beta patches ago, Blizzard removed Spirit Link for Resto shamans, and added in Riptide. At first, I was skeptical. My class had been changed inside out. Moving from a mp5 /haste class to a crit / haste class, it became a bit overwhelming. Things just didn’t make sense at all. It looks though, however, as beta slowly draws to a close, that the image is starting to come together.
What is Riptide?
Riptide, my friends, is our battle axe to wield against Paladins. For a while, our enemy was those dreaded CoH Priests, but now, we are back to fighting our ancient enemy. Yes, this little baby of ours will crush to loladins!
Alright, onto the actual discussion. Riptide by itself is actually rather unappealing. It is weak for it’s mana cost, doesn’t seem to scale well, and utilizes a spell we will probably not use much, right? Right. However, when you couple it with other abilities, you get one massive package of complete synergy.
Chain Heal
- Riptide – Increases chain heal effect on that target by 25% + Consumes the HoT
- Improved Chain Heal – Increases the ammount healed by your chain heal by 20%
Healing Wave
- Tidal Waves – You have a 100% chance after you cast Chain Heal to lower the cast time of your next Lesser Healing Wave or Healing Wave spell by 30%. In addition, your Healing Wave gains an additional 20% of your bonus healing effects and your Lesser Healing Wave gains an additional 10% of your bonus healing effects.
- Improved Water Shield – When you gain a critical effect from your Healing Wave or Lesser Healing Wave spells, you have a 100% chance to instantly consume a Water Shield Orb. This helps to a lesser extent.
Riptide, Tidal Waves, and Improved Chain Heal, offer probably the best Synergy in any of the talent trees I have ever seen. So farm this leaves us with the following rotation (Assuming no spell haste).
10 Seconds Total for your Initial Cast
9.1 Seconds for your Following Casts
Not a bad rotation, and you will still have your panic buttons if you start having spikes. But with Earth Living Weapon, Ancestral Awakening, and Healing Way, you should be covered. Also, each of your healing waves would be hitting the tank 7-9k easily once Healing Way is stacked.
What if I want to Raid Heal?
I have not yet been able to get an oppurtunity to try raid healing on a shaman since Naxx opened, only MT Heal. I assume it will be something like Riptide – Chain Heal – Chain Heal. You would castsequence RT and CH together so your RT target would be your initial Target.
Glyphs, Glyphs Baby!
In Wrath, we get 6 glyph slots. So far, there isn’t much in the way of healing glyphs, but there are several must haves.
Major Glyph
- Glyph of Chain Heal – Heals one additional target
- Glyph of Water Mastery – Increases your passive mana regeneration of your water shield. By 30 mp5.
- The last slot I am debating for. There are 3 other obvious glyphs you can use, but I am leaning towards Glyph of Mana Tide Totem, which makes the totem give back more mana. We will see though.
- Glyph of Water Shield – Increases Water Shield Charges by 1.
- Glyph of ??? – We Require more Minor Glyphs
- Glyph of ??? – We Require more Minor Glyphs
