Insane Tsulong Healing (Resto Shaman)

Before you flame us for "cheating": We killed this boss in less than one raid night the reset before without this tactic.

I wanted to wait until other guilds on the realm had killed it before making the video public... That happened rather soon after this kill though, so whether or not it was done using this strat or "legit" remains unknown for now (no logs uploaded). I know for a fact the video, while unlisted, was seen by people from at least one rival guild, but that really doesn't matter now.

So how is it done? Our new resto shaman turns out to be a smart fellow. He found out that pets, while not counting as targets for Ascendance healing, still take healing from it. I think that requires a bit better explanation:

Ascendance duplicates healing and splits it between targets within 20 yards of the shaman. If no one is in range of the shaman and he casts a heal, he will simply heal himself for the same amount. If one other player is in range, that healing is divided by 2, but heals both targets. Let's say our Shaman heals Tsulong for 6 million. Ascendance heals another 6 million, which is split evenly between the Shaman and Tsulong, so 3 million each. Now, since pets don't count as targets, but still take the healing, the pets will ALSO take 3 million healing each. Coupled with Ancestal Guidance and Guardian Spirit, you get idiotic healing on Tsulong.

Ancestral Guidance takes 40% of the Shaman's healing done on targets and heals 3 injured targets within 40 yards. As a hunter, I can summon up to 31 pets at the same time (12 per snake trap (readiness = 2 snake traps), 2 dire beasts also with Readiness, my main pet (+1) and Stampede (+4)). Additionally, I specced every pet Tenacity for 40% increased healing, and obviously used Spirit Bond for another 10% (stacking multiplicatively, yielding a total of 54% increased healing). In the kill above, I didn't use Dire Beasts, but I had double Snake Trap and Stampede up.

Anyway, using the example before, and for simplicity's sake, 30 pets without any increased healing taken on them:

Shaman heals Tsulong for 6 million. Tsulong, the Shaman and 30 pets take 3 million healing each. That's 96 million healing. 40% of that (38.4 million) will jump to 3 other targets; Tsulong and 2 raid members. But wait, Tsulong has Guardian Spirit from a holy priest (which also resulted in a higher initial healing, without it the 6 million heal would be less than 4 million), so the actual healing from one 6 million heal with 30 pets up is 38.4m * 1.6 = 61.44m.

The funny part is, our shaman actually messed up a bit and didn't get to heal for as much as he could have. I've personally seen a log from a russian guild whose Resto Shaman also did quite a lot of healing, but that's cause he healed several times in the region of ~15-16 million. That would basically have been ~180m in one heal, had they used this strategy with 30 pets
I am told by our Shaman (Onty) that he did indeed get inspiration from Vixsin who made a huge blog post on Tsulong, Ascendance and Ancestal Guidance, so thanks to him ^_^ His blog can be found here: http://lifeingroup5.com/

World of Logs for the kill: http://worldoflogs.com/reports/rt-vd...?s=2914&e=3085

Patch 5.0.4 Beta Class Balance Analysis

Originally Posted by Blizzard

Tank Time
I mentioned previously (though it very well could have been in another thread) that we have been looking a lot at tank balance. We think tanks surviving short windows of spike damage has been fairly balanced in beta for some time, and indeed we are seeing all tank classes used effectively in beta Challenge Modes and Heroic raid testing.

We have made a few changes to longer-term tank healing required, which will show up both on beta and live very soon. I mentioned that we were initially going to nerf monk and DK, but we now think they and paladins are fine. Instead, the rage tanks required too much healing, so we are causing them to take less damage and have more rage for active mitigation.

Druid

• Auto attack rage generation increased by 75%.
• Thick Hide now provides 12% physical damage reduction.

Warrior

• Rage generation from Revenge increased from 10 to 15.
• Rage generation from Shield Slam increased from 15 to 20. (Sword and Board continues to give 5 extra, so 25 now).
• Reduced internal cooldown on Critical Block from Enrage from 5 sec to 3 sec.
• Increased damage reduction from Defensive Stance from 15% to 25%.
• Increased armor from Unwavering Sentinel from 10% to 25%.

I'm confused. Auto attacks currently generate 6.2 Rage. Does this mean they will now generate 10.85 Rage (~75% increase)?
Yeah, sorry, those are internal tuning numbers for us that won't have any context for you. It is a 75% increase on auto attack rage.

Shaman
Can you clarify how Healing Stream Totem scales with haste, because it's starting to do my head in.
Sure. The short version is that it’s not a HoT, and it functions differently. The totem casts a heal instantly, and once every two seconds (reduced by haste), and despawns after 15 sec (unaffected by haste). So haste on a HoT typically works to add ticks at certain breakpoints, which will half the time increase the total duration beyond the base, but that doesn’t happen with Healing Stream Totem.

Mage
Could we get some news if the devs are doing anything to fix the range issue with Inferno Blast's mechanic?
There are some times where we do some tricky things under the hood to make things feel better, and this is one of them. The intended gameplay is that you should be able to get a Heating Up proc while already casting another spell, and follow that one with an Inferno Blast to force a Hot Streak proc. You should never need to cancel your current cast to get that benefit.

So, tricky under-the-hood things follow. Again, you do not need to know or understand this to use Inferno Blast effectively, or play Fire; it should “just work." But, for those interested in the gory details, here they are:

• Fireball, Pyroblast, and Frostfire Bolt (which was bugged until recently) have a cap on their effective travel time.
• Their effects will take place after a maximum of 0.75 sec.
• The fireball visual will still travel at the same speed, but you’ll see the damage number pop up and get the Heating Up proc after 0.75 sec, even though the fireball visual is still traveling through the air.
• We normally prefer the game to feel more visceral, by tightly syncing visuals to effects, but this change felt worth the gameplay benefit to us. In a future patch, we may be able to hasten the visual to match.
• If you have Heating Up, and get a non-crit, then Heating Up gets removed, as expected.
• However, if the non-crit came from a spell with a travel time, or from Scorch (which is supposed to be able to replace Fireball rotationally while moving), then we delay the removal of Heating Up by 0.25 sec.

Death Knight
Death Knights and Upcoming Nerfs
I posted recently in the large class balance theorycrafting thread that we have buffed the mitigation and rage generation of Guardian druids and Protection warriors. After some more analysis, we don't think DKs and monks needed additional nerfs to be on par with paladins, who were our target.