Low Tide Ascended raiding

1. Introduction

This spec - Low Tide - was my choice for Realm First SSC progression on Thrall. It has extremely strong output and is not too difficult to play at a sufficient level for most content. If you are looking for more advice and information about the build or it's playstyle, you can find me in the ascension discord (RWA).

2. Spell-kit, Important Talents & Random Enchants

EREs:

• Transcendental Embrace,

• Nature's Flow,

• Primal Tide.

Even though its not an ERE, Hasty Nature's Swiftness is extremely important.

Key Talents:

• Tidal Waves,

• Ancestral Awakening,

• Improved Water Shield,

• Tidal Mastery.

Key Buffs:

• Tidal Force,

• Nature's Swiftness.

Required spells:

• Healing Wave,

• Chain Heal,

• Riptide,

• Tidal Force (1 epic gem),

• Nature's Swiftness (1 epic gem),

• Water Shield (2 rare gems),

• Innervate (or Evocation / Mana Tide Totem / Brilliance Aura) (2 rare gems).

Very good, but not required:

• Earthliving Weapon (2 rare gems),

• Cloudburst Totem (1 epic gem),

• Healing Rain.

3. Playstyle

This spec utilizes Shaman spells and smart healing to heal multiple targets at the same time. It requires a high critical heal chance to trigger these smart heals and make them more effective. The basic abilities used are: Healing Wave, Chain Heal and Riptide.

The main haste talent here is Tidal Waves. This is an effect that is granted by using Chain Heal and Riptide. It is used to make our main skill, Healing Wave faster.

Thus, our spec will primarily use Healing Wave, targeting people that have active Riptides on them and every few casts. We then want to refresh our Tidal Waves by casting Riptide or Chain Heal.
Try to avoid casting Chain Heal into fresh Riptides, prioritize people that have either 1-3 seconds or remaining, or no Riptide at all. The high number of Riptides is crucial to make our LRE proc often.

The spec has an additional AoE tool to use when necessary, Healing Rain. It's not too powerful, just throw it down before heavy AoE damage.

The powerhouse of this spec is Tidal Force. Simply put, it increases the power of all of our basic heals. This buff's duration is increased whenever we crit with Shaman heals, and we want to maintain this all the time.

We have a second, less powerful buff to maintain as well: Nature’s Swiftness.

This is a cooldown that makes our next Shaman spell instant cast, but it also gives a 10% haste buff. With Nature’s Flow, we can achieve 100% uptime on this buff while casting constantly.

All of the above means we will be aiming to crit with pretty much everything.

The spec scales Intellect to achieve this, so look out for gear with:

• Crit rating

• High Intellect

• Haste

• Spellpower

In that order. We ideally want to reach a crit rating of at least 35-40% on the character sheet.

Attributes to avoid:

• Spirit

• Mp5.

The build recovers mana based on Critically healing with spells and scaling maximum mana. Spirit gives nothing, and there are better ways to manage mana than Mp5 on items if you find your mana lacking. These stats are not detrimental, but they are also not useful.

If your mana is lacking, use the Totem of the Thunderhead relic from M+. It makes Water Shield give a lot more mana, and is extremely useful early on when your spec lacks mana sustain.