Resto Shaman 4.0.1

Hey remember when this bee log was about World of Warcraft. Forever ago right. Well my trajectory has been up and down since my last post about frozen bone dragons. I quit for the month of September when raiding content finally dried up like a raisin. Wait, that makes it sound sweet and delicious. Uh, think of a better simile that describes no new content for five months. Scratch that, moving on.

I got a wild hair last week to reactivate my account. This was without the knowledge of the changes in patch 4.0.1 by the way or that it would be out this week. I came back with the silly idea to level my Mage to 80 and drop 5,000 gold for epic herbalism flying. My timing was perfect for coming back to re-tune my Shaman.  New spells, talents, glyphs, reforging, crunch overload! So I rebuilt him, ran some heroic five mans and healed in ICC 25.

My out of the gate build was 0/2/34, something I drummed up a week before the patch without any research. Last night after raiding for two hours I left and respeced to 2/3/31.  My first impressions are as follows:

• Chain Heal feels weak for situations where the raid is not grouped up. You might say "duh that is the intent", but prior to the patch it was not the case. The first hit is much weaker now, so in these case the new Healing Wave is actually a better option, from a mana perspective at least.  Granted running the new Glyph of Chain Heal doesn't help either.
• Healing Surge seems like the go to spell, though I have read it gulps mana at 85. For 80 though I could spam it the whole fight. High cost, fast cast, big heal. Sold!
• Riptide used to be a "use on every cooldown spell" and now it seems it is even more valuable. Greater Healing Wave and Healing Wave both seem painfully slow without it. Glyph of Riptide seems to be a better option than it's counterparts too.
• Focus Insight seemed like a perfectly worthy 3 points in the 2nd tier last week.  That was until I saw first hand and read about just how situational it is.  First, you don't get the benefits of the shock if you miss with it. Second, any free GCD you could use to shock could be used to heal.  Third, if everyone is topped off and you can DPS you lose the benefits of the bonus healing in over heal.
• Telluric Currents, see Focus Insight.

Lots to play with still, mastery, reforging to get mastery, best bang for my buck stats, gemming, etc.  More as I play it.