Glyph of Healing Stream Totem

[Neric]

For some reason quite a lot of high level to bis shamans are using Glyph of Healing Stream Totem. If you do some research on this, you hardly find anything. From what I could find, it is only mentined on elitistjerks with an interesting explantion: On the Valithria Dreamwalker fight, the totem gains from healing stacks, so it can heal for up to 5k per tick. The glyph is used to maximize this effect. Is this the reason?

My explanation would be this: If you check the logs, healing totem - discounting overhealing - performs surprisingly well, so it makes sense to buff it by 20%.

Anyways, does someone have a definite answer for using this glyph, other than taking a more or less educated guess?

[Neric]

Here is an example of a shaman playing with Glyph of Earthliving Weapon + one point in Elemental Weapons and the result is marginal at best.

https://uwu-logs.xyz/reports/23-02-1...Pajo/?boss=all
https://armory.warmane.com/character...daeron/talents

The actual numbers on real logs show that Earthliving is not impressive at all, so buffing it with the glyph and spending points on it is a mistake.
Obviously it's one of these mistakes that don't matter, because the guild is clearing ICChc nevertheless, but that doesn't justify it. It's just an excuse!
Therefore my recommendation is to replace Glyph of Earthliving Weapon with whatever you like, but just make sure to replace as soon as possible.

P.S.: The other shaman on their roster is using Glyph of Healing Wave. That one isn't on the list of useful glyphs either. These guys are mavericks.
https://armory.warmane.com/character...daeron/talents

[angrylol]

Earthliving is superior to Healing stream glyph for sure. Even if you are put in proper group and it's effect uis maximized, it's just a dumb heal.
Earthliving ticks on targets that need(purposeful/smart) healing vs random tick every 3 sec on 5 people, how is this even a question.
What even is your point here?

[Neric]

My point is that this is wrong. Earthliving is a complete trash ability that counts for 4% overall healing at best (if glyphed and with one point in Elemental Weapons). That's not based on some theorycrafting on Excel, it's based on logs. I can prove it. Every log looks pretty much the same. Healing Stream Totem outperforms Earthliving by factor 2 at least. The argument that Earthliving helps people that it is flawed as well, because it has massive overhealing as well. Besides that, if the raid gets that low where Earthliving gets a proc-bonus, it's too late anways. In most cases everyone is well above 35% health.

There is so much flawed information floating around, that it is very important to clear this up once and for all. Earthliving is TRASH!

Buff your core abilities, not some fancy minor effects. If you don't believe me on that one, look up "survivorship bias" on wikipedia. Believe it or not, but Healing Stream Totem usually counts for your top 3 healing abilities, despite the fact that it only heals your group. It heals your group for a LOT, so you can focus on others. The bonus effect is that it keeps you alive. It's that simple!

[angrylol]

How is it flawed, if your job as a shaman is to bring back hp after big hits on raid and spam tank if that's done. Extra 5% chance on targets that NEED healing is better than 20% stronger ticks on targets that are not in danger, may or may not take damage probably don't even need healing(dumb heal).
Keep looking at some numbers, you will grow a big brain and end up spamming chain heal 24/7.

[Neric]

You don't get it, but that's great because it gives me the opportunity to bust a myth. Most of the common WotLK-knowledge is based on old postings done from random people in 2010. Random people come up with random ideas that may either be good or bad. For instance, someone noticed that Glyph of Earrthliving Weapon increases the proc-chance by 5%. Now simple math tells us that 0.2 x 0.05 = 0.01. That means it's not 25%, it's 21% unless the tooltip is wrong. Given the fact that Blizzard has employees writing those tooltips who aren't that good at math, otherwise they would do math-related stuff, that could be the case.

Here is how you should actually approach the problem. You take your logs and then you look at actual healing. There you see a hierarchy of abilities. It looks like this: https://imgur.com/a/tNFMQQG

Then you ask yourself which abilties you want to buff with a glyph. The order should be determined by the hierarchy. So you go with Chain Heal, Earth Shield and Lesser Healing Wave. That is actually what 95% of the shamans are doing. If you are running two resto-specs, like I do, you design one spec for single-target healing (Gunship, Saurfang, Rotface) and the other spec for multi-target healing (Marrowgar, Deathwhisper, Festergut, Professor, Bloodqueen, Sindra). In that case you have a decision problem, because on your single-target spec you will drop Glyph of Chain Heal and on your multi-target spec you will drop Glyph of Light Healing Wave. So what do you pick up according to the hierarchy? You pick up Riptide and Glyph of Healing Stream Totem.

You NEVER pick up Glyph of Earthliving Weapon. You just avoid this trap and you will do fine.

[angrylol]

If you want to break a myth, you will need to do more than this, avoiding the existing logic with numbers in logs will not work. You are the first one in 20 years to see those numbers in logs? You will need to show a better logic than "earthliving ticks on tanks and targets in danger are better than 20% stronger ticks on targets where those ticks are just number inflation". I don't know how can you trump that, that would be a problem unrelated to healing stream glyph itself, instead it's a raid leader thing, how he builds groups and healing stream/shadow priests are in proper groups where their heals are maximized. Even jumping trough those hoops it's still questionable if it's more effective from all alternatives.

You will never break any myth like this.

[Neric]

There is no better proof than looking at logs. They show what is really happening. That result can be very different to what theory would suggest. There is an old saying: Theory and practice are identical - in theory, but not on practice! In practice Earthliving is performing poorly. The reason is that Chain Heals are not always jumping, because there is lots of overhealing aka "heal sniping" going on. So you expect to get lots of procs because you cast lots of Chain Heals, but the people you heal are already full health when your heal hits them. The situation that people are really low on health (< 35%) occur way less than expected.

Once again, the whole subject doesn't matter for most shamans, because they go with the standard build and the standard glyphs (Chain Heal, Earth Shield, LHW). But there are also some endgame shamans who are using Glyph of Healing Stream Totem. It seemed to me that they could be on to something. That's why I made the initial posting. After doing some additional research I am convinced that they are right. If you are running only one resto spec, because you picked up free elemental gear, you have to make a sacrifice of some sort. One sacrificed Earth Shield in favor of the Totem, the other guy sacrificed LHW.

https://armory.warmane.com/character...daeron/talents
https://armory.warmane.com/character...daeron/talents

Am I the guy who is changing history? Nope, I am just writing about others who realized it way before me. Besides that, I don't care. If it's true, just write it!

[Neric]

Here are two recent logs from one of these guys on Bloodqueen, obviously an encounter where you do get lots of Earthliving-procs in practice:

https://uwu-logs.xyz/reports/24-04-1...queen-lanathel
https://uwu-logs.xyz/reports/24-04-2...queen-lanathel

There were some wipes, but glyphed Healing Stream Totem outperformed unglyphed Earthliving by 30%-50%. Switching glyphs would be a huge mistake.

[angrylol]

You are not addressing the issue here.

If(if!!!) you are in a group where healing streams usefullness is maximized and necessary, you will have shadow priest in your group, where his usefulness is also maxiimized. It means that your healing stream will "usefully" heal 3 targets, lets say 2 tanks and one warrior/rogue/feral, spec with limited self heals. Even without that, lets say healing stream heals 5 targets "usefully" for 3000 instead o 2650. Is it worth the higher uptime of earthliving on tanks and raid wide players who are tanking damage, specifically in need of healing? Boosting heal with questionable usefulness, no control over it,, does not sound like a good idea.
In your own example on BQL, mmelees take most damage from unavoidable stack, so chain heals and earthliving procs go there, where it's most useful. Ticking every 3 secconds with healing stream a little more on 4 targets(best case, because you will not stack with melees) is better?

That's your mission, seperate "useful" healing from "number boasting" healing. People have really hard time to grasp things that sims and logs cant show, it seems.

It's the same with UH an glyph of disease:
1. sims show it glyph higher damage, it's better
2. puts on a clown hat
3. uses pestilence every cycle anyway, because that the whole point of your existence
4. ???

[Neric]

I can tell you exactly what my Healing Totem heals, it's xxxx on the log. I can also tell you what Earthliving heals, it's yyyy on the log. In the end xxxx > yyyy. Obviously I cannot draw any conclusions about the "usefulness" of these heals, but I can assure you that all of those players healed had less than full health.

Using the undefined category "usefulness", that doesn't show up on the logs, is a brave attempt to cover up the fact that the gap between xxxx and yyyy is huge. Apparently you believe that Earthliving is some sort of lifesaver that regularly prevents people from dying, but that's hardly the case. If the raid gets into trouble Divine Hymn and GTS get activated. These are the "oh ****, not good"-devices. The normal raid-health-situation is not critical. In fact, the logs show it, because if such situations would happen more often, Earthliving would get triggered much more often and rank much higher on the list, at least higher than 4%.

[Neric]

Actually if you look at the logs on Bloodqueen you will see that the overhealing-percentage of HST was clearly less than ELW. So much about "usefulness". If you save people from death, then your overhealing is close to - if not exactly - zero. The more overhealing you have, the less criticial your heals are. HST wins this category as well. So I guess, we call it right here. HST > ELW!

[angrylol]

So you are healing and still have no sense of which targets should be prioritized for healing? Players that are in danger and players that can be ignored?
It's all nice and great if your groups are built properly and I'm sure 20% healing stream is useful. But it lacks practicality and is not flexible.
I'm not sure where you got the idea about some grand difference, both choices have very little impact. I never raised any question of how much one or the other heals in number. Your argument is based on logic which will lead you to spam chain heal, because it's the most effective heal, you can clearly see that in logs.

[Neric]

What do you mean with target prioritizing. I heal the players who take the most damage. Can't prioritize more than that.

If Earthliving procs (note: IF), it adds 4 ticks x 850 (= 3400) over 12 seconds. In these 12 seconds I can cast 7.5 chain heals, or 12 Lesser Healing Waves.

Once again, Earthliving is almost last on the list on real logs, only Abacus and Trauma perform worse. It produces about 60% overhealing on average. It's not that big of a deal. Healing Stream Totem may be an equal opportunity healing device (which is actually quite modern) that doesn't discriminate. It overheals for 75%, but the 25% when it actually does something useful are roughly the double amount of what Earthliving does.

In the end it doesn't matter, because all what counts is one simple question: Did the raid survive or not? If it did, then healers are excused for every stupidity. That's also why healing parses don't matter unless you fail. If you fail, it gets interesting though. Then all of this stuff really matters all of a sudden. If you had Earthliving glyphed instead of Healing Stream Totem, you are in big trouble in my book. It's a simple fix though: 20g in AH will make you a better shaman.

[angrylol]

But isn't higher chance for 3400 heal on targets that are in danger better than 20% stronger healing stream ticks on players are are not in danger(healer group)? Even if leader makes groups for properly utilizing your healing stream, pissing of disc priest because he has to learn by heart which player is ranged and which is melee. All these hoops everyone has to jump trough, just so you can tick 20% stronger usefully.

This is like fifth time you keeps repeating numbers that say nothing.