I took a look at the bonuses for Restoration Shaman’s tier 8 sets in this post HERE before the patch. Now that Ulduar is out and we’ve begun trudging through, we are beginning to see these items drop and get ready for use. To recap here are the set bonuses
Personally I like the 4 piece bonus but with the addition of the Riptide Glyph I’m very meh about the 2 piece. The 4 piece bonus is equatable to the 4 piece bonus of the Tier 7.5 set. Lets take a look at the set bonuses for 7.5
- 2: Water Shield Boost: Your Water Shield is 10% stronger
- 4: Sprit Link Chain Heal Boost: Increase the healing done by your Chain Heal and Healing Wave by 5%
As far as those are concerned I still think that 7.5 got the better allotment for set bonuses, at the very least on the 2 piece. The 4 piece bonus comparison boils down to either a 5% boost in your healing, or what essentially  turns out to be 8% haste. Seems pretty even to me. Now that you know the set bonuses, lets take a look at the stats on the gear.
Stats Valorous Earth Shatter Regalia Conqueror’s Worldbreaker Regalia iLevel 213 226 Required Level 80 80 Intellect 338 386 Stamina 369 381 Mana Regeneration 93 79 Armor 5224 5337 Critical Strike Rating 95 228 Haste Rating 176 173 Spell power 449 525 Sockets 1Meta 5red 1yellow 1blue 1Meta 2red 2yellow 3blue
This is assuming you’re using all 5 pieces for each which isn’t always the case but will be good for highlighting the differences between the sets. Lets look at what you gain moving from 7.5 up to 8.5
- Int: +48
- Stam: +12
- MP5: -14
- Crit: +133 (~4%)
- Haste: -3
- Spell Power: +76
I am confused a bit at the lack of regeneration, I mean we actually lose 14MP5. While that might not seem like a lot, it’s a good chunk. I imagine that the idea is to use Improved Water Shield more often to compensate. My guess at this is based on the large amount of crit the set gains. It just seems odd after bringing MP5 amounts down in patch 3.1. All the other stat gains seem normal enough, a slight loss in haste (3 rating really is a drop in the bucket) and it does have a healthy increase in spell power. The choice in colors for the sockets also seems odd to me. Moving away from 5 red slots and spreading the love. Perhaps to make room for +in/+crit gems ? Haven’t quite figured that out yet, but that’s my best guess.
When Should You Switch to Tier 8?
To be honest, I think you should continue to use your Tier 7 until you have a 4 piece bonus from the Tier 8. The Tier 7 bonus being a straight +5% more healing on CH and HW is just plain good until you can don a 4 piece Tier 8. It should be noted that on a pure Heal Per Second value, Tier 8.5 pulls ahead. It does however consume a lot of mana. Even if you switch to 8.5 it might be worth keeping your 7 and 7.5 around for longevity fights. As I gather more numbers I’ll be able to provide a move definitive answer as to when one set is better then another.
The good news is not much has changed. Aside from a slight increase in our crit raiting, and the removal of a little MP5 (still scratching my head at that one) the rest of the set seems on par for upgrading. It feels very much like the increase from Tier 4 to Tier 5 back in Burning Crusade.
On a final but purely aesthetic note, I do love the way the new set looks. =D
Next post we’ll take a look at what I think our current best in slot gear is now that Ulduar is up and active.
What do you think about the Tier 8 set?
Until next time, happy healing,
I’m easily confused so apologies for “dumb” questions. Does the glyph negate the (2) bonus? They don’t stack?
Valkures last blog post..on the edge of achievement
On a purely aesthetic note: I got the non-Tier shoulders that share the same graphics and they look really silly on my orc, I hope the whole Tier set looks better.
I agree that more often than not, it makes sense to keep T7 until you get the 4pcT8 Bonus. For tank healing duties, slapping on those T8 pieces could be a good idea earlier (lots of crit and -1 sec on Riptide for those fast Riptide HW HW combos).
I’m still a little bit puzzled what we should do with all that crit, maybe blizzard wants us to do a good chunk of our mana regen via improved water shield instead of stacking haste/mp5 and just be chainheal bots with this juicy 4pc bonus. But every resto shaman who stepped into Ulduar knows that the days of pure chainheal spamming are over anyway and adapting our healing to every encounter is absolutely necessary.
@4pcT8 vs 4pcT7: I’ve seen the numbers somewhere and I think the T8 bonus is clearly better by a significant margin if we look at chainheal only. I’m already drooling over this bons because for me fast chainheal >> large chainheal. T7 on the other hand boosts HW as well and I find myself casting HW a lot in Ulduar.
drugs last blog post..Addons: Shamans only
What do you think about the Tier 8 set?
Shammies: gain 133 crit, lose 14 mp5
Paladins: lose 45 crit, gain 39 mp5
I think Blizzard mixed up our gear!
You mentioned the Glyph of Riptide, does anyone use this new glyph? I am curious because there seems to be some excellent Major Glyph options out there, and this one didn’t seem worth dropping any of the 3 I use (Earth Shield, LHW and Chain Heal)
@valkure: It’s not that it negates it, in fact the glyph increases the duration of the HoT by 6 seconds while the set bonus lowers the cool down by 1 second. My comment on it was with all the other bonuses we received that 1 second seems less, for lack of a better term, special then it did prior to seeing things like the Riptide Glyph
@drug: I agree it would be great to put those pieces on for tank healing or fights where you need to get Riptide out as fast as possible (Hodir comes to mind). I was aiming for the general rule of thumb there =D. I do honestly think blizz intends for Improved Water Shield to be a larger part of our recovering mana then it has been. The increase in crit seems to support that theory. I agree whole heartedly with your statement, any shaman who has walked into Ulduar should realize we are no longer Chain Heal spam bots. We have to use every heal in our repertoire (wws from my last week in Ulduar support that) but even so, I crave that 4 piece bonus.
You are right though, comparing the two in the same encounters, 4pcT8 pulls way ahead, but there is still something to be said about Healing Way and 4pcT8
@jeffo: Trade ya!
@Irismoon: For glyphing there are some AMAZING options. I’ve been playing around with glyphs and to be honest. I wind up switching them sometimes depending on fights. The Riptide one is really great for fights like Hodir where you have to be mobile. Extending the life of the HoT effect lets you put it out on more targets so when you go to whack someone with a chain heal you increase your chance of making it a buffed chain heal. One glyph that I personally no longer user is LHW. It’s nice but I find I’m better served by the Healing Stream totem glyph. HST glyphed is accounting for almost 25% of my healing done in just about every encounter since the patch. I also don’t use the earth shield glyph. I’ve found that it’s nice to have that 20% increase, but it pushes too much over healing and I can better use the glyph for something else. My normal set up now is HST, CH, Mana Tide or Riptide, CH, Mana Tide. I found personally this has given me the best results. I carry a stack of Riptide and HST glyphs with me to raids and swap them out. It’s a bit extreme but it works =D. If I had to pick a set to stay with though, it would be HST, CH, MT.
25%??? You’re HST is 25% of your healing? How? It only affects a single group, and that group is usually spread out and moving. I’ve had zero success making this thing work.
I was really excited about it when I read the changes, but have found it completely lack-luster.
What’s your secret? 🙂
-Z
@Zorash: It’s all about group placement. Normally I get in a group that has the MT and the melee, so placing it so it’s heals are effective isn’t much of an issue. My other two shaman who have similar results work very carefully in the placement of the totems. It has a decent range to work with and if your raid is smart with it’s movement, 30 yards is a lot to play with. Just like realestate it’s all about location, location, location. Keep trying and you’ll find the sweet spot. Also if you want let me know I’ll link some wws for you.
I actually took the time to go look at my HST numbers from last night in Uld25 and I was shocked. 16% of my healing was from HST. That means HST was responsible for nearly 3 million healing over the course of the night. I was shocked.
Thanks for pointing this out. I never realized how much this was helping out before. It’s good to know. 🙂
-Z