[OFFICIAL] MoP Beta Build Changes Discussion Thread

[Protoman]

Melee Hit needs 7.5% hit to be capped.
Spell Hit needs 15% to be capped.
Expertise needs 7.5% to be capped.

Luckily, expertise also gives spell hit.

This means Enhancement only has to go for the minimum (7.5 hit + 7.5 expertise) like everyone else to get full benefit of spell hit.

Well that's a relief, good change. More room for Agil and Mastery now!! And PVP gearing will be so much easier now as well thanks to spell pen being removed from the game.

If you have zero Haste, this means for Elemental, the base cast time is 1.575s, not 1.5s.

0.075 seconds at worst is not "hours", stop being ridiculous.

I guess that's not too bad. So Ele could keep the glyph permanently, and assuming they have some decent haste on their gear (above 5%) it will still be below 1.5 sec right?

Still annoyed with chain heal, telluric currents, and water shield glyphs tho. So many things Resto should be getting baseline, and they will have to sacrifice for instead.

And I hope that we will be getting a pet bar for Elementals regardless of talent or not (with standard 3 pet control stances), otherwise removing the pet bar from wolves seems silly if we don't pick the talent. And I REALLY hope they are reworking Guardians to be more precise, they keep making us more dependent on them for our DPS but their accuracy and reliability hasn't really improved. "Target my target" is a must, or some way to follow our most recent direct damage spell or melee ability. Flame shock/Stormstrike is basically that, but not very effective atm.



Also.....anyone know if the lvl 90 Elemental surge spell thing is affected by Maelstrom Weapon? Has a cast time so curious if Enhance can reduce it.

[iadamson]

As a Resto Shaman I feel like the new glyph system is less appealing before it was about making a choice - and sticking with it for the most part. Now you are simply changing them every boss encounter. However the glyph system now seems to allow you to customize your Shaman to be specifically a group healer or a tank healer. Depending on the role you are assigned to in the raid could also determine your play style/ glyphs you will be using. Pretty much between your talents and glyphs you have two different play styles or roles to choose from. Hopefully one doesn't out power the other in the numbers... which will probably happen some time down the road.

[splitverges]

However, I haven't actually parsed the log yet with any tools. I'll run it again (cleaner) if needed.

Here is a better combat dummy log: http://www.apatheia.org/download/clog_b002.txt

[Radux]

Here is a better combat dummy log: http://www.apatheia.org/download/clog_b002.txt

Is there any possible way to trim down some of the fat? It's going to take forever to try to get past all the lock/rogue/whatever spells to find Shaman stuff -- especially when there are 30-40+ spells hitting per second.

[Nattigor]

Thank you Endus for reiterating how the Prime Glyphs are no longer something we need to worry about, we should have them all. Major glyphs, which is what the last 9 pages seems to be worrying about have never been "EPIC DPS INCREASE BHLKLKASDLFH I NEED THAT" They have been more focused on a slight change in a mechanic or CD or duration of our spells, usually this applied to specific fights. Not an all around buff.

Ele is in a good place, numbers aside, things are definitely positive, same with enhancement.

In all the rage of monk's and warlocks being so dramatically altered, maybe blizz forgot we heal too? HELP US!

[Endus]

I guess that's not too bad. So Ele could keep the glyph permanently, and assuming they have some decent haste on their gear (above 5%) it will still be below 1.5 sec right?

Should be, yes. It just means that in PvE, you'll want to consider whether you gain enough from the mobility to make up the DPS loss from the cast time increase. And really, look at the Warlock Tier 6 talents; one of them lets them do what this glyph does (for all spells, admittedly), but it DOUBLES the cast time. I really don't think the glyph is BAD, it's just a tradeoff, which is what Majors should be.

And, TBH, our mobility was "okay" before GoUL. We needed help after WotLK, but UE did a lot to help in that regard. I honestly thought GoUL was unnecessary to begin with. Obviously of benefit, but it was taking us from "kinda turrety" to "OMG best mobility of any caster", and that's always seemed too good to be "right". It's still a given for PvP, but for PvE, it's going to depend on the fight, and I'm okay with that.

Still annoyed with chain heal, telluric currents, and water shield glyphs tho. So many things Resto should be getting baseline, and they will have to sacrifice for instead.

I disagree. We don't really know how the Water Shield glyph works yet, but Telluric Currents is going to depend on what healer role you're playing, how geared you are, and how you choose to gear; if you go heavy Spirit like I imagine most healers will, you could probably just skip it outright. What TC does is it gives you a choice; gear more for other secondary stats, improve throughput on a per-cast basis, but have to sacrifice throughput overall by casting LBs for mana. TBH, I see it more like the Mage talent Invocation, where you trade passive regen for active regen, though a little less direct about it. If you go high Spirit AND grab TC, you'll never go OOM but will probably do less HPS than someone who picks one or the other.

And Chain Heal will be highly situational. If a fight is stacking-friendly, you wouldn't take it. It's only the highly mobile or "spread out for AoE" type fights where you'd really want it. It's a tradeoff. One you'll make based on the fight.

You could make an argument that the benefits of EVERY major could "should" be baked into the baseline ability without the penalty. I don't agree that it's a legitimate argument, though; you need to demonstrate that the ability is necessary the vast majority, if not all, of the time to try and make that case, and I just don't see that for these.

[Tzunade]

I need some answers and some clarification on a lot of things please, i am an elemental shaman

Unleashed Fury - Explain me this, i have to cast unleash element to get the efect or this efect is instant with out cast UE?

Primal Elementalist - so our FET and EET now split into 4 elementals or we will going to have both + 4 of each totem? and what will be the CD time on them?

Elemental Blast - 2 sec cast - 12 sec cooldown - lol for me really this is insane lol 2 sec cast and 12 sec CD lol

New Talents

Conductivity - this is all for healers cause i can't see an apply for this talent on elemental spect


Talents
Astral Shift - Instant - 2 min cooldown - i hope we can cast this while we are stunned.

Earthgrab Totem - Instant - 30 sec cooldown - same with this, hope we can cast this while stunned or sapped.

Call of the Elements - Instant - idk if people going for this talent but maybe yes.



New Spells

Capacitor Totem. Instant - 45 sec cooldown - Summons an Air totem with 5 health at the feet of the caster that gathers electrical energy from the surrounding air and then explodes after 5 sec to stun all enemies within 8 yards for 5 sec. So, we have an stun totem that will stun after 5 sec? if that is the case is really stupid cause other classes have instant stuns like warriors and rogues


Major

Glyph of Capacitor Totem. so this will reduce the time of the stun to 3 sec? lol i don't think in what this can help us, why we cant get an instant stun.
Glyph of Fire Elemental Totem = so we gonna have close 3 mins CD on this mmmm with only 2 mins on cd mmmm well we have to test this on our dps

Glyph of Flame Shock. i don't think this really will help us cause we have now flame shock on 24 sec but maybe this can help us to improve our dps.

Glyph of Ghost Wolf. While in Ghost Wolf form, this don't mean we will be running 100% speed or yes?

Glyph of Healing Stream Totem. damn they take off the resist up.

Glyph of Lava Burst. Your Lava Burst spell will always be a critical strike regardless of the presence of Flame Shock on the target, but it deals 5% less damage, this will be a nice for pvp and with the frozen power talent to take off the melees away from us (elemental shamans)

Glyph of Telluric Currents. Reduces the damage dealt by your Lightning Bolt spell by 30%, but causes it to restore mana equal to 50% of damage dealt. this can only be a nice for healers i guess cause elemental don't really need this efect.

Glyph of Totemic Vigor. Increases the health of your totems by 10% of your maximum health. i don't think people take this glyph

Glyph of Unleashed Lightning. Your Lightning Bolt takes 5% longer to cast, but may be cast while moving. lol they are making our LB cast time close 2.2 (with out haste involve) if we take this, so we have to see if getting this glyph help us or not on dps when moving is needed or i am wrong?

Glyph of Wind Shear. damn they take off of us the 5 sec cd for interrupt damn damn damn.


Minor

Glyph of Healing Storm. Each application of Maelstrom Weapon also increases your healing done by 20%. enh only
Glyph of Totemic Encirclement. When you cast a totem spell, you also place unempowered totems for any elements that are not currently active. These totems have 5 health and produce no other effects. this maybe can help us on pvp and i think its a lot but we will see.



Changes to Abilities

Elemental

Elemental Focus - When you land a non-periodic critical strike with a Fire, Frost, or Nature damage spell, you enter a Clearcasting state. The Clearcasting state reduces the mana cost of your next 2 damage or healing spells by 25%, increases spell damage done by 10%, and increases single-target healing done by 50%. mmmm something to make us a secondary helper for healers lol why elementals can't be only dps i hate when blizzard try to make our class hybrid, if healers need help then make them more power but leave alone to the people that want be a dps class.
Shamanism - Increases the damage of Lightning Bolt by 50% and Chain Lightning by 70%, and reduces the casting time of both spells by 0.5 sec. why they can't make our LB on 1.5 sec, i mean put LB on 2 sec and with this elemental can get 1.5 sec and with the glyph the cast time will be close 1.7 something like that

that is my opinion on the little things that i have seen.

[Anonymitylol]

How can some shamans be fine with Glyph of chaining? We should not need a glyph to have what other classes have, we should not force 10m raiders to take it while 25m raiders can ignore it, if they do make it a glyph it should not have a negative effect, if that's the case then they can make Wild growth 10 yards and have a glyph, make CoH 10 yards and have a glyph. It's an insult, and they need to know it.

[Teriz]

Some of those glyphs are kind of.....strange.

Unleashed lightning having an increased cast time? Why?

Why reduce the duration of the FET by less than half just because you're reducing the CD?

I hope some of this gets changed in beta.

[Radux]

Unleashed lightning having an increased cast time? Why?

Look at it in retrospect:
your 2 second (with 0 haste rating or haste buffs) LB would be 2.1 seconds, but you can move!

compare that to the level 90 Warlock talent that lets them cast while moving for double the cast time.

Major glyphs are about making choices. Trading X for Y but lose a little bit of Z.

[ap0ll0]

There's a whole lot of complaining going on about the new Major Glyphs, but I think we just need to get used to the concept that they're intended to come with a bonus and a tradeoff. We've gotten used to the Prime Glyph system where it's a flat boost to our output, and Blizzard seems to be edging away from that design strategy in order to force the players to make real choices about how we want our character to function. Let's give it a shot before we rip the idea apart, yes?

Besides that, I'd like to put my two cents in here about some of the updates. I'm a Resto Shaman so I'm going to focus entirely on that, apologies to my Enhance/Elemental compadres:

Unleashed Fury
-I agree that it does sound better for PvP than for PvE, but that's alright. Talents are supposed to be situational. I wouldn't mind a "slight" buff, though I'd like to see how it works in-game first.

Primal Elementalist

Primal Fire Elemental
-I think it would be nice if the channeled "Empower" ability would also increase healing by 5%. I have two Elementals as a Resto shaman just like everyone else, can't I benefit from both?

Primal Earth Elemental
-A controllable mini-tank, a little damage, a little stun, a decent defensive CD, whats not to like?

Elemental Blast
-A slight personal buff that requires upkeep; sounds interesting, it's a talent for those who like micro-management I think.

I feel like the Tier 6 (Level 90) talents as a whole have a strong theme for the two dps specs; they all result in a slight damage increase through different methods. I feel like the theme is less unified for Resto though; a slight personal heal vs a slight personal shield vs a slight temporary increase in output. I suppose it all depends on whether Unleash Elements (+Earthliving) auto-selfheal on a 15-second CD is equivalent to a situational 20% shield and the 66% uptime of a 5% secondary stat buff. If those numbers are balanced then they're all situational, which is what talents are supposed to be; it just seems less unified.

Glyphs:
-The biggest complaint seems to be about the Water Shield glyph. I think there have been plenty of fights in Cataclysm dungeons where little to no group damage exists (or it's avoidable). If I can avoid taking any damage, then I won't be getting any damage procs from my Water Shield anyway. So if I'm glyphed for 10% increased mana regen and don't expect to gain any mana from damage procs anyway, it's a straight buffing glyph. Very situational, but you can see the application I think.

I am however confused about two of the glyphs, maybe you guys have figured it out? Earth Shield glyph makes it so you can't loose your stacks from being attacked, but duration is lowered to 45 seconds; is it even possible to loose all 9 stacks in 45 seconds? Without the internal cooldown, thats a melee attack every 5 seconds (almost assured), but with the internal cool down is that a normal time period? It seems much shorter, and if that's the case then I can't see what the application is; if they're basically the same then what's the point? The second is for Enhance, the Lava Lash glyph no longer spreading FS; that must have another component we're not seeing yet, right?

Phew, long-winded. Let's keep things positive here guys, most of us haven't gotten into the beta yet so we really can't say how anything feels until we've gotten our hands on it.

On a final note, I'd like to see some of those "Fun" glyphs that the other classes have been getting. Can I get "Glyph of the Boulder", makes your Earth Shield orbs 200% larger? All I'm saying is Thrall's Boulder Shield puts us all to shame...

[Endus]

Some of those glyphs are kind of.....strange.

Unleashed lightning having an increased cast time? Why?

Because Major glyphs aren't intended to be straight no-brainer DPS boosts, there's a tradeoff. There are no Prime glyphs any more, so any Primes that got downgraded to Majors had a balancing factor added to offset the obvious advantages, to bring them in line with every other Major.

Why reduce the duration of the FET by less than half just because you're reducing the CD?

Again, tradeoffs.

Majors aren't about flat boosts. They're about situational tradeoffs.

It's no different than the CL glyph that, on live and in MoP, reduces the initial damage but hits 2 additional targets. You trade one thing for another. That's how Majors work.

[ApocDev]

While overall, I'm decently pleased, I feel like Resto is getting the shaft, yet again. (And yes, I'm aware this is just early-early beta, but my point still stands)

Having to drop 15% effectiveness on Chain Heal to gain what should have been in the ability from day-one, seems like they're intentionally gimping us. (And to those who truly believe that there was some technical limitation to CH not being longer, doesn't understand how things work. At worst, there would be a texturing problem, which is easily solved. Changing jump distances is a simple single-value change, literally.)

I don't see any usefulness in the T6 talents at all. The earth elemental may be useful on a 5min CD for a 20% damage reduction, but that's about all I can see its usefulness for. (Obviously excluding when healer DPS matters... I hope there's no fights like that in MoP) If we wanted a self heal, we'd glyph for Healing Wave. I'm still not sold on Elemental Blast. Having to spend 1.4-1.5s casting something that at most would give 66% uptime, AND cut into our healing GCDs, seems like a pointless talent. Especially given that it only has a damage aspect, not a healing aspect. Add healing, and I'm sold.

Conductivity does look fun, however it forces us to spam LB and HR (on the boss) for it to be effective. (Why would you cast HR if you're not stacked up, and planning to spam CH as well?)

I'm perfectly fine with shaman cold snap being 8min. I feel like 5minutes is just a bit too short for it to not be abused every chance you get. (It'll be abused for MTT more often than anything)

I personally don't see the Glyph of Earth Shield being all that useful. How often do you actually refresh ES? (Very rarely more often than 30-40s).
Glyph of Riptide... I'm not sure how to react on this one. Are they trying to make us druids? I can't personally see a time where being able to blanket the raid in RT would be any better than HR/CH.

Glyph of TC... I'm not fond of having to waste a glyph slot for something that resto shamans should have built-in. This has become nearly required with the recent patches, and with the more "active" mana regen in MoP, I don't see why we have to waste a glyph to get something back that we should have baseline.

Glyph of Water Shield... meh. I think this is going to depend on what gear looks like at end-game, but removing our orb procs (which is where the majority of WS's regen comes from) seems a bit of a self-nerf.

I'll likely be taking GoHST, GoTC, GoChaining, and kicking and screaming about all three.

I really dislike the change to HST. Instead of being a low-health blanket heal, its now a single-target, short duration, low healing, long CD. This completely changes the way the entire totem works all together. I'm fine with it being a utility totem, but the CD seems far too long.

[iadamson]

Here's my take on most of the glyphs that apply pretty much just to resto. I think i've touched mostly on stuff readers have pointed out I would say take a look at what I have to say about riptide and cleansing waters. There's a few spells I feel shouldn't be glyphs and some should be baseline.


Glyph of Chaining. Doubles the jump distance of your Chain Heal spell, but reduces its healing done by 15%.
- This should be worked into Chain Heal and not a glyph. It's pretty much a necessity to life, we've been asking for more range on chain heal for a long time, the added -15% healing done is pretty dumb. Blizzard excuse for not giving it to us before was because of coding. It kinda feels like this should have just been worked into Chain Heal and not just an optional glyph.

Glyph of Earth Shield. Your Earth Shield charges are no longer depleted when taking damage, but Earth Shield's duration is reduced to 45 sec.
- Some nice addon's will probably be made to warn us every time it expires so we don't have to watch it on the tank. However the global CD will be more annoying and I believe the charges last longer then 45 secs.

Glyph of Healing Stream Totem. When your Healing Stream Totem heals an ally, it also reduces their Fire, Frost, and Nature damage taken by 10% for 6 sec.
- Fortifying Waters reworked into our Healing Stream Totem, this will probably only get some use of boss fights with high spell damage i'm think like that frost wyrm before KT type of battle. However other healing glyphs will likely have this one benched, imo if it is to get any use it will have to be made minor or bring back prime.

Glyph of Riptide. Your Riptide no longer has a cooldown, but also no longer instantly heals the targeted ally.
- I think this is ground breaking and a game changer to how a Shaman heals. I suppose we will be using riptide and chain heal mostly this expansion. Although there could be a negative effect to this. Will riptide still be considered a direct heal and proc certain effects, I believe earthliving being one of those effects. I think this is over looked by many, and should a little more looking at just to see the possible draw backs.

Glyph of Spiritwalker's Grace. Increases the duration of your Spiritwalker's Grace by 5 sec.
- High movement fights will probably see this glyph used often. Not really sure if it's major glyph material as other glyphs will out shine it on pure out put.

Glyph of Telluric Currents. Reduces the damage dealt by your Lightning Bolt spell by 30%, but causes it to restore mana equal to 50% of damage dealt.
- I hated this talent, I think this means we will need to add hit to our gear in MoP if we don't get it from talents, or other abilities. I'd rather spend my time healing and not dpsing as a way to gain back mana. I hope this glyph isn't needed for Shaman mana regain, and was just put it to prevent QQ from people who really liked it. Now it seems to be a shell of its former self people probably won't use it at all and Blizzard will probably end up removing it down the line.

Glyph of Totemic Vigor. Increases the health of your totems by 10% of your maximum health.
- All totems should have 10% of the casters health as a baseline.

Glyph of Water Shield. Increases the passive mana generation of your Water Shield by 10%, but Water Shield no longer activates when you receive damage.
- No more worrying if water shields up, no more wasting a global on it. However no large regains from damage... pretty fair trade off.

Glyph of Cleansing Waters. When you dispel a harmful Magic or Curse effect from an ally, you also heal the target for 4% of your maximum health.
- This isn't on the OP's post, however it's posted on wow insider's site. Again this is situational and will likely be out shined by various out put glyphs and will hardly see the light of day unless it's a very heavy mandatory dispell boss fight. I think this should just be worked into Purifty Spirit and removed from glyphs.

[Endus]

Okay, seriously.

"I like the benefit of this Major but not the drawback" does not translate to "this should be baseline without the drawback".

The entire POINT of Major Glyphs is to be a tradeoff. Whether the good outweighs the bad will be personal and often dependent on the situation. None of the ones being mentioned as "should be baseline" are necessary for basic functioning. They have obvious benefits, yes. All the glyphs do. But if you push that argument to its logical conclusion, all Major glyphs should be baked into their abilities without their drawbacks leaving us with just the cosmetic minor glyphs. And that's clearly ridiculous.

That you want the benefit but feel like it might not be worth the price is exactly what you should be feeling. That means the Major is well-tuned.

And yes, things like Glyph of Chaining are absolutely situational. Most fights in DS it wouldn't be desirable. Most fights that require people to spread don't also involve heavy raid damage; that's WHY you're spreading, to AVOID heavy raid damage. Yes, there will be times when you'll want it, and that's when you'll glyph it, but the idea that it "should be baseline" just because it's a buff is baseless.

All Majors bring buffs. That doesn't mean they should be baseline. Nor does you wanting the benefit mean they should be baseline. It just means you should take the glyph.

[Teriz]

I don't think Resto shamans should complain about the lvl 90 talents since the level 75 talents benefit Resto a lot more than the DPS specs.

Fair trade IMO.

[Deleted]

Tbh, too many people missed the part of major glyphs having a trade-off.
When it comes to the chainheal glyph, you need the realize the following: if the beam doesn't bounce it doesn't heal either past the point of the remaining bounces. This is easily a buff when targets are more spread out regarless off the 15% 'nerf'. I see it too often that my chainheal doesn't bounce past 2 targets which means a decent part of the healing is wasted. More over this change reflects the attitude of blizzard regarding to make choices.

Also this isn't limited to only the shaman healers. Someone mentioned the Wild growth glyph and the CoH one. Didn't check if the WG is still the same as the current, but essentially it increases the cd from 8 to 10 seconds while healing a possible 6th target. Now I don't know about you, but personally I found the cd increase very annoying and not useful, especially not in 10-man so I removed it. However in 25 it can be an increase as it frees up some cd's, but you have too make certain all targets get hit otherwise it's a simply a waste. Last time I checked the CoH glyph charges an extra 35% mana for just 1 extra target that gets healed. This is in the same line with the WG glyph as it's amazing if you are in need of heavy AoE phases, but a waste of mana when not all targets are hit or when you are in need of more longlivety when mana managment is involved.

Also from what I understood from the sticky of cata that the Unleashed Lightning glyph currently means that you have to choose if you take the +damage glyph for either LB or LvB which essentially means it is already a trade-off right now. Also when a lot of movement is involved this easily is superior as a dps-increase. Also I wouldn't be surprised if the 'penalty' only kicks in the moment if you are already moving meaning if you are already casting the moment you start moving this first shot is free to begin with.

[ApocDev]

Okay, seriously.

"I like the benefit of this Major but not the drawback" does not translate to "this should be baseline without the drawback".

The entire POINT of Major Glyphs is to be a tradeoff. Whether the good outweighs the bad will be personal and often dependent on the situation. None of the ones being mentioned as "should be baseline" are necessary for basic functioning. They have obvious benefits, yes. All the glyphs do. But if you push that argument to its logical conclusion, all Major glyphs should be baked into their abilities without their drawbacks leaving us with just the cosmetic minor glyphs. And that's clearly ridiculous.

That you want the benefit but feel like it might not be worth the price is exactly what you should be feeling. That means the Major is well-tuned.

And yes, things like Glyph of Chaining are absolutely situational. Most fights in DS it wouldn't be desirable. Most fights that require people to spread don't also involve heavy raid damage; that's WHY you're spreading, to AVOID heavy raid damage. Yes, there will be times when you'll want it, and that's when you'll glyph it, but the idea that it "should be baseline" just because it's a buff is baseless.

All Majors bring buffs. That doesn't mean they should be baseline. Nor does you wanting the benefit mean they should be baseline. It just means you should take the glyph.

The fact that ONLY Dragon Soul played to shaman strengths has nothing to do with Glyph of Chaining being completely bogus. There has only been one raid where we wouldn't actually use that glyph, and it happened to be last tier, and there's even 3 (maybe 4 depending on strategy) fights where the glyph is nearly mandatory to be competitive, WITHOUT the 15% reduction.

We haven't been begging Blizzard for years for a longer reach on CH just because we "want it". Its a necessity that should have been there from the start. And instead of that being solved the way it should have been years ago, we get to choose to either finally get what we're asking for, and gimp ourselves, or continue to be gimped on spread-out fights, while every other healing class has zero issues. At least bring the other classes in line with us and make it somewhat fair. If the MoP raids are mostly spread out, I bet we'll see far less shamans in high-end progression, just like we did in T11 and part of T12.

I'm not arguing that Major's shouldn't be tradeoffs. I'm perfectly happy with that. I'm arguing the fact that Glyph of Chaining is even a glyph at all. I would make the same argument for TC, but I don't see any viable alternatives anyway (as I said before, that will depend on the content when we get to see it)

[Radux]

I don't think Resto shamans should complain about the lvl 90 talents since the level 75 talents benefit Resto a lot more than the DPS specs.

Fair trade IMO.

Really? It's not like you have to really sacrifice anything to actually do that healing-ish-stuff from T5 talent (aside from the HR one, which is lame for dps).
- Spend 1 GCD for a decent Tranq-like-raid-saving-heal-CD. Ok.
- Hit a Cd and continue doing damage, but that happens to heal people who are in need of healing (smart healing). Yet again, a win.

The T6 talents require you to basically change your play (outside the UE one, which I feel is a bit weak for PvE based on wording alone) -- you need to maintain control of a 'pet' for some damage reduction. You have to actually not heal and spend time dpsing to maintain a buff that you can only hope will make up for the fact that you weren't healing (assuming that there weren't lulls in the fight that didn't require healing or something).

It almost sounds like you're upset that DPS can't heal as well as Resto or something, or the mere fact that they get the chance to heal by pressing 1 button every 2-3 minutes.

I just don't many of the complaints at this point.

[Endus]

I don't think Resto shamans should complain about the lvl 90 talents since the level 75 talents benefit Resto a lot more than the DPS specs.

Fair trade IMO.

I do think Resto needs at least two good choices. I'd be perfectly fine with Primal Elementalist not being a good choice for Resto if the other two were solid; with three wildly different specs, it's hard to ensure the talents are equally good for all three, so if they're good for two specs, and every spec has 2 solid choices, I'm okay with that.

Edit: It IS possible to make a talent just have three different effects, but IMO that's a lazy design route out of this problem.