Resto Shaman parses for Throne of Thunder significantly lower than other healing classes

The first analysis of Throne of Thunder by Raidbots is out, and if you are a resto shaman, they are pretty damn depressing.  I suspected resto shamans would perform poorly due to the lack of stacking and the immense movement required in Throne of Thunder, and looks like my suspicions were correct.

Nearly every single fight, in both 10M and 25M, resto shamans are lagging significantly behind every other healer.  Not only that, the only fights they aren’t last, they are second to last (rising to 4th out of 6 healing classes on a single fight in 10N), and still well below the pack.  So low in fact, that I suspect 25M raids currently running 2 shamans will cut back to a single shaman, and 10M raids might drop their resto shamans all together, in favor of a better healing output class.

Just how bad are things?  You can click through to the graphs if you want to be shocked by the dismal performance, but here are the average HPS so far for both 10M and 25M. These are all normal modes.  All numbers were rounded to the nearest 1,000 HPS and ties were determined if they were less than 1,000 HPS apart.

Note: Not many top progression guilds are uploading their logs to World of Logs as of yet, but the guilds clearing ToT are generally upper end raiding guilds logging their raids, particularly for the later boss fights in the instance.

Jin’rokh the Breaker
25N Parses – Shamans are 5th ahead of Restro Druids (10k HPS behind leader Holy Pally)
10N Parses – Shamans are tied for last with Holy Priests (21k HPS behind leader Holy Pally)

Horridon
25N Parses – Shamans are last (11k HPS behind leader Disc Priest)
10N Parses – Shamans are 5th ahead of Holy Priests (21k HPS behind leader Disc Priest)

Council of Elders
25N Parses – Shamans are last (14k behind leader Holy Pally)
10N Parses – Shamans are 5th ahead of Holy Priests (17k HPS behind leader Disc Priest)

Tortos
25N Parses – Shamans are last (18k HPS behind leader Disc Priest)
10N Parses – Shamans are last (23k HPS behind leader Disc Priest)

Megaera
25N Parses – Shamans are last (18k HPS behind leader Holy Pally)
10N Parses – Shamans are 5th (26k HPS behind leader Holy Pally)

Ji-Kun
25N Parses – Shamans are tied for last with Mistweavers (11k HPS behind leader Holy Priest)
10N Parses – Shamans are 4th (18k behind leader Holy Pally)

Durumu the Forgotten
25N Parses – Shamans are last (15k HPS behind leader Holy Priest)
10N Parses – Shamans are tied for last with Mistweavers (15k HPS behind leader Disc Priest)

Primordius
25N Parses – Shamans are last (18k HPS behind leader Holy Pally)
10N Parses – Shamans are last (18k HPS behind leader Holy Pally)

Dark Animus
25N Parses – Shamans are last (13k HPS behind leader Disc Priest)
10N Parses – Shamans are last (16k HPS behind leader Holy Pally)

Iron Qon
25N Parses – Shamans are last (16k HPS behind leader Holy Priest)
10N Parses – Shamans are last (13k HPS behind leader Disc Priest)

Twin Consorts
25N Parses – Shamans are last (24k HPS behind leader Holy Priest)
10N Parses – Shamans are last (24k HPS behind leader Holy Priest)

Lei Shen
25N Parses – Shamans are last (20k HPS behind leader Holy Priest)
10N Parses – Shamans are last (25k HPS behind leader Holy Priest)

The ugly recap?  Shamans were the worst performing of all healing classes on 11 out of 12 fights on 25M and were the worst performing on 8 out of 12 fights on 10M.   Ouch.

Even Ji-Kun, where shamans should theoretically show off due to all the stacking, they still performed poorly, although they did manage to climb to 4th out of 6 healing classes on the 10N version of the fight.

Fortunately, shamans still bring their mana tides, spirit links, healing tide and storm lash.  So they still have utility as a claim to fame.  But you have to wonder how long raid leaders will be happy with utility over raw output, especially when pushing heroics.

That said, there are also some amazing resto shamans who can push out amazing numbers, in spite of this showing lower HPS but it does make you wonder if any of them are stacking and healing through damage to get the increased HPS as opposed to spreading and moving constantly.

There are some who are crossing their fingers that Blizzard will also see Shamans buffed.  You may remember in Cataclysm that Blizzard buffed Shamans’s Purification via a hotfix, their healing passive that buffed all healing done from 10% to 25%, because they felt shaman healing was lagging too far behind other classes.  Unfortunately, it took Blizzard over two months after the Cataclysm launch to buff their heals.  And in this case, we are well into the Mists of Pandaria expansion, so it might not be as likely shamans would get an overall buff on healing.  But clearly, something needs to be done or we will see fewer resto shamans competitively raiding.

Update: Blizzard buffed Resto Shaman’s Healing Rain, Chain Heal and Earthliving by 20%.