Why is blizzard so stubborn about resto shaman spread heals?

[Mormolyce]

Because that's their kit, shamans are supposed to be strong at stacked healing.

Just like how they refuse to put combo points on the Rogue instead of the target, or remove Backstab/Shadow Dance's positional requirement, because those things are part of the Rogue kit.

[nobodysbaby]

Hello. I'm a Holy Priest main, but I always had many healer alts, of wich Shaman is one since BC.

The latest buffs to HR mademe surprised, since I think the specc makes you feel "helpless" in movement and spread fights with heavy AoE. If they want Shaman to shine in only stacked fights, I believe they do it wrong. Also, I believe HR is relatively too strong enough compared to say RT+CH even pre buff. It would make more sense to buff radius of CH or make the CD of RT shorter, and no, I'm not buying that Shamans will only cast CH's then, they still want to use their whole arsenal. Another issue is how much more powerful Shamans will be in 25's compared to 10's with the new target cap(?).

For the normal mode raider this won't matter so much. For the progression raider, this will mean bench on the fights that doesn't "suit" your niche, or stack a class Shamans as much as possible for the stacked AoE heavy fights? I was under the impression Blizzard wanted us to bring the player, not the class.

TLDR; I believe the buffs are in the wrong places, it's not helping movement and spread fights and I think there's where Shamans need help.

[Krysann]

With 25m testing beginning I worry that the buffs we have received will be negated. Blizzard seems to prefer to balance around 25m which leaves 10m is the lurch. Enough whining about shamans making other classes look bad in stacked situations and those Healing Rain and CH buffs we got will be gone. As a 10m raider, I would like something, anything to make me not feel like the weak link in the healing team when the entire raid is standing 5-10 yards apart.

[volrathx]

i think the fix is easy
chain heal is the spell the made us different to other healers in the older content. why not just fix it or make it better? i love healing rain and i thinks its fine where it's at

since mop came out i hardly ever cast it. i mean not as much compared to older content

my thoughts/ideas to fix chain heal
why not just Fix chain heal by lowering the mana cost on it, make the current chain glyph baseline in it to the spell with the without the 3 cd added to it.
than make a new glyph to make it jump to 1 more target.

Another thought to it make our chain heal also applies the earth wep. hot or hot like affect to it. on each target it hit by the chain heal

my thoughts on the new talent going off subject
have a better talent
like water elemental that cast chain heals to party members or places a healing rain around it

[Keiyra]

i think the fix is easy
chain heal is the spell the made us different to other healers in the older content. why not just fix it or make it better? i love healing rain and i thinks its fine where it's at

since mop came out i hardly ever cast it. i mean not as much compared to older content

Blizzard is cautious when tinkering with Chain heal. They fear that making it too good, will return to ICC spam days where it was nearly the only spell u cast (for both single target and aoe). So they are trying to ride the line of making it decent, without being better than other options for single target healing. Not reducing on each jump is a good change. Along with the glyph change it should be a better option.

It is afterall the only spammable smart heal (with no CD or non-mana resource) - besides the twin demons of Atonement/Fistweaving (which have sort of killed the act of spot healing targets in a raid, particularly in 10s)

[Geekboy]

This has long plagued Resto Shaman... We either have really awesome tiers (T6.5, T10, T14) or completely horrific tiers (T8, T11, T15) and it's ALWAYS based on how the encounters are designed.

This. Exactly this.
1) Tier 8: Ulduar: Horror, horror. Priests owned with PoH spam.
2) Tier 9: Coliseum: Ok I guess.
3) Tier 10: ICC: Fine, when you had enough haste.
4) Tier 11: Cata: Horror and then fine. The numbers were so far off at the start, then it was fixed.
5) Tier 12: Firelands: Horror. Druids owned with WG spam.
6) Tier 13: Dragon Soul: Perfect. SLT+HR owned.
7) Tier 14: HoF: Fine.
8) Tier 15: ToT: Bad.

So 8 tiers: 1 perfect, 3 fine/good, 1 bad, 3 horror.

This shows me that the healing mechanics are off, I don't see other healers swinging so much from each side. Hoping for a tier that might suite them.

- - - Updated - - -

Regarding mastery:

Raids aren't allowed to sit at low HP for long, because there are so many high damage bursty boss abilities that can kill you if you're below 50-60%, which is coincidently near the point where mastery gives the same out-put as other secondary stats.

Also our mastery is shit compared to what other healers gain.

Likewise with our mastery, having the raid at a constantly lowish hp% but with no risk of being gibbed isn't exactly interesting either.

They really need to do something about our Mastery, that's all that needs to happen. It's a double-edged sword though, it's roughly overpowered in PvP, but in PvE it's pretty weak and because of the mechanic behind it, you can't really buff it.

I saw a post with a suggestion I liked. Switch Ascendance and Mastery.

1) Mastery: X% of your healing is distributed evenly among nearby allies.
2) Ascendance: Increases the potency of your healing spells by X%, based on the current health level of your target.

Results: On use button that we can use when players are dropping in health. Not a stat that's sometimes bad and sometimes good.

[Tiberria]

This. Exactly this.
1) Tier 8: Ulduar: Horror, horror. Priests owned with PoH spam.
2) Tier 9: Coliseum: Ok I guess.
3) Tier 10: ICC: Fine, when you had enough haste.
4) Tier 11: Cata: Horror and then fine. The numbers were so far off at the start, then it was fixed.
5) Tier 12: Firelands: Horror. Druids owned with WG spam.
6) Tier 13: Dragon Soul: Perfect. SLT+HR owned.
7) Tier 14: HoF: Fine.
8) Tier 15: ToT: Bad.

So 8 tiers: 1 perfect, 3 fine/good, 1 bad, 3 horror.

Shaman have not been better than the second weakest healer (from a throughput only perspective) at any point since T6/the end of BC. There were some tiers like Dragon Soul where our actual value exceeded the numbers (because of how broken SLT was on the most difficult progression fight), but the numbers are pretty ugly.

T7 - Weakest healer (but it was Naxx and barely mattered)
T8 - Weakest healer (Ulduar was a disaster for Shaman)
T9 - Weakest healer
T10 - 2nd Weakest healer - Chain Heal scaled really well with haste, but Paladins, Disc Priests and Druids were all also amazing (and better than Shaman) this tier. Only Holy Priests were in a worse spot, even though it's remembered as a strong Shaman tier
T11 - Weakest healer. Even when a 20% throughput buff was hotfixed in, Shaman were still bottom feeders
T12 - Weakest healer by far
T13 - 2nd Weakest healer but very viable due to SLT breaking mechanics. Only Disc Priests had lower overall throughput though.
T14 - 2nd Weakest healer (only Druids were in a weaker spot). We were mostly viable due to utility and cooldowns, but greatly overshadowed by Priests, Paladins and Monks
T15 - Weakest healer by far

The history of Shaman tuning the last 3 expansions is really really ugly. It's why I am hoping they air on the side of overbuffing us going into next tier so that maybe we can end the tier at least in the top half of healers for the first time in 6+ years. The nature of how we scale relative to other healers (primarily caused by our mastery) means that we always look better in PTR testing than we actually turn out on live. As a result, the QQ of other classes really should be tempered until we actually are overpowered on live, if that ever happens. There is 6+ years of history saying it likely will not.

[Barky]

I saw a post with a suggestion I liked. Switch Ascendance and Mastery.

1) Mastery: X% of your healing is distributed evenly among nearby allies.
2) Ascendance: Increases the potency of your healing spells by X%, based on the current health level of your target.

Results: On use button that we can use when players are dropping in health. Not a stat that's sometimes bad and sometimes good.

^ This. Though you say 'nearby' allies, making it even more close range. if it was something like in 20-30 yards that would be awesome.

[ganiccus]

Shaman have not been better than the second weakest healer (from a throughput only perspective) at any point since T6/the end of BC. There were some tiers like Dragon Soul where our actual value exceeded the numbers (because of how broken SLT was on the most difficult progression fight), but the numbers are pretty ugly.

T7 - Weakest healer (but it was Naxx and barely mattered)
T8 - Weakest healer (Ulduar was a disaster for Shaman)
T9 - Weakest healer
T10 - 2nd Weakest healer - Chain Heal scaled really well with haste, but Paladins, Disc Priests and Druids were all also amazing (and better than Shaman) this tier. Only Holy Priests were in a worse spot, even though it's remembered as a strong Shaman tier
T11 - Weakest healer. Even when a 20% throughput buff was hotfixed in, Shaman were still bottom feeders
T12 - Weakest healer by far
T13 - 2nd Weakest healer but very viable due to SLT breaking mechanics. Only Disc Priests had lower overall throughput though.
T14 - 2nd Weakest healer (only Druids were in a weaker spot). We were mostly viable due to utility and cooldowns, but greatly overshadowed by Priests, Paladins and Monks
T15 - Weakest healer by far

The history of Shaman tuning the last 3 expansions is really really ugly. It's why I am hoping they air on the side of overbuffing us going into next tier so that maybe we can end the tier at least in the top half of healers for the first time in 6+ years. The nature of how we scale relative to other healers (primarily caused by our mastery) means that we always look better in PTR testing than we actually turn out on live. As a result, the QQ of other classes really should be tempered until we actually are overpowered on live, if that ever happens. There is 6+ years of history saying it likely will not.

Seriously? I can't speak for the 25 man format since I was in a 10 man at the time but resto shamans were just shining in that tier. And it had everything to do with the heavily stacked encounters and constant raid damage you were going through. I healed with a pally, a resto druid and a disc priest and I was beating them by a mile on every single fight except hagara.

[Tiberria]

Seriously? I can't speak for the 25 man format since I was in a 10 man at the time but resto shamans were just shining in that tier. And it had everything to do with the heavily stacked encounters and constant raid damage you were going through. I healed with a pally, a resto druid and a disc priest and I was beating them by a mile on every single fight except hagara.

Yeah, I am talking about 25 man, and only talking about throughput, but you can still see this if you look back at Raidbots historical data. I was on a Holy Pally main at the time (and my Shaman was doing 10 mans) and Holy Pallies were just annihilating every other class in 25 man by a ridiculous margin.

[Krisshaman]

I have to agree with most people here, shaman mastery just plain sucks. Blizzard even acknowledged it back in ICC when shamans and druids had the same mastery, but for some reason it was decided it wouldnt work for druids as well as shamans. I also remember going from being neck and neck with a holy pally on valithra healing, to being roughly 10% behind him after 4.0. That fight highlighted the major flaw in shaman mastery, anyone who has to be brought to 100% health takes more healing to achieve from a shaman than it does from other classes, because as we get them closer to full, we do less with each heal, be it a player or an NPC. Tsulong was one of the worst for me personally, seeing him take huge healing from me, then as the fight wears on, im still hitting the same buttons for max output, but its doing less than it was the last sun phase.

[Sparkidy]

I saw a post with a suggestion I liked. Switch Ascendance and Mastery.

1) Mastery: X% of your healing is distributed evenly among nearby allies.
2) Ascendance: Increases the potency of your healing spells by X%, based on the current health level of your target.

Results: On use button that we can use when players are dropping in health. Not a stat that's sometimes bad and sometimes good.

That's been suggested a few times, I think. My suggestion was to have overhealing be redistributed among nearby allies, but having checked out just how much overhealing I usually do, this would probably be a bit too good.

Changing it to Mastery: an extra X% of your healing is redistributed evenly etc. etc. would be better wording, but perhaps that's what you meant. It would have to have a very low starting value though, as it would be a pure, linear throughput buff. I would REALLY love a mastery that's actually providing extra healing 100% of the time. I think the range would have to be relatively small, like 20yds, otherwise again, it's getting a bit too good. Make it require deliberate positioning to get the most out of it.

I like the idea of changing Ascendence to that as well. It still acts as a throughput cooldown, but requires planning and timing to use effectively. Since Blizzard claims to be all about trying to rewarding players for skillful play, I'm sure that'd fit.

[Deleted]

Problem with that Ascendance like mastery is that it would be almost useless on arenas - great for PvE, useless for PvP, so it would be almost opposite to current mastery(and still our current mastery is still useful for PvE)

[Sparkidy]

I don't really ever PvP, and as a result I'm often guilty of not considering how my ideas would affect it. Valid point.

That said, with HTT becoming baseline, you'll still have an extra CD (you'd take AG for pvp I assume?), so would decreasing the effectiveness of Ascendence in PvP "break" resto? From what I've heard, it's still very good for arenas?

[Geekboy]

Problem with that Ascendance like mastery is that it would be almost useless on arenas - great for PvE, useless for PvP, so it would be almost opposite to current mastery(and still our current mastery is still useful for PvE)

Yeah that's the problem with our mastery.
PvE: Helpful sometimes, useless at others.
PvP: A must mechanic.

If you take out how mastery currently works then everything breaks in PvP. I assume that is why they haven't messed with it, they would have redo everything.

[Defrager]

My main is no longer a resto shaman but I do still really enjoy the spec.

How about:
* Chain heal can bounce up to 40 yards.
* No cooldown.
* Mastery does same effect but base value and increment is lowered, chain heal heals for more the shorter the bounce and flat % increase to healing rain.

This way, spread healing is addressed to some degree, but it won't be near as good as stacked healing, with big chain heals over short distance and big healing rains?

[Manhands]

Our mastery should buff the amount of health provided by Ancestral Vigor. That is all. Many other problems are being solved.

[Tiberria]

Our mastery should buff the amount of health provided by Ancestral Vigor. That is all. Many other problems are being solved.

No, that would solve nothing and be even worse than our current mastery. Especially considering that Ancestral Vigor is not and should not be considered actual healing output (it's only relevant when the health buff is the difference between a player living and dying which is not very often). It would be a mastery that provides nothing more often than the current mastery.

[Eliot123]

Why not keep Ascendance as it is, make Ancestral Awakening our mastery (remove the on-crit part) and keep Deep Waters as a passive for resto shamans capped at like 40%?

[Seriss]

Our mastery should buff the amount of health provided by Ancestral Vigor. That is all. Many other problems are being solved.

That's a horrible idea. When have you ever managed to consistently keep AV up on a spread, moving raid? Keeping it up the tanks is no biggy. But I don't want a mastery that only serves 1-2 people in the raid, and the rest gets health added during heavy damage phases which then drops off again... Doesn't really make sense when you think about it from a "damage pattern vs. heal pattern" perspective.