Legion Restoration Shaman Alpha Discussion

[Deleted]

Im confused, does the artifact still have a chance to proc the Power of the Waves spell or has it been removed? It is still in the mmo artifact calculator "Artifact Equip Effects"

Power of the Waves travels from you to an injured ally over 3 sec. When triggered, it pops, granting [ 300% of Spell Power ] healing to all allies within 5 yards.

Other allies may touch Azshara's Boon to activate this effect.

I dont have access to the beta.

[Rokoz]

#ReturnSLTtoLiveVersion

But seriously, for PVE, the projection change is somewhat helpful but as far as PVP goes, it has made the spell a bit harder to use - especially in a bind or in combination with PVP trinket (or PVP talent as it will be in Legion.)

[Volitar]

#ReturnSLTtoLiveVersion

But seriously, for PVE, the projection change is somewhat helpful but as far as PVP goes, it has made the spell a bit harder to use - especially in a bind or in combination with PVP trinket (or PVP talent as it will be in Legion.)

This was one of the first concerns brought up with the new SLT I feel like if they haven't said anything about it yet no changes are going to be made.

[Gardiff]

Power of the Waves doesn't exist anymore. It actually hasn't existed for about 4 months now.

So I've been doing a lot of normal bosses, getting a feel for mana on actual duration fights. It's pretty safe to say that WS/HW will work as it's incredibly mana-efficient and still strong. CH builds just OoM you very fast. No one can really deny this on beta. There are still a few fights where mana is 'infinite' or where the fights are short enough such that CH spam can be done so it will still have a role. Also, you can't always use WS on every fight (not every fight has a ton of stacking) and so CH/High-tide or Ascendance will still play a role (and obviously in 5 mans)

https://www.warcraftlogs.com/reports...R#type=healing
https://www.warcraftlogs.com/reports...w#type=healing

Above are a few examples of 'longer' fights with WS/HW usage. With this type of build, you can last 2x longer in fights. Because WS also has travel time, it can be paired up with dropping a CBT immediately after the WS cast. AG vs CW will likely come down to personal preference (for a WS build). EST is strong, but may not always be an option. Torrent is still slightly stronger for me in a raid setting, but this could change depending on spell selection (and whether you pick CW) and so you have options on that tier as well. All-in-all, it is great to see a non-CH dominant build work very well as it just allows for more options.

The only other thing is that if you go WS/HW and sort of ignore CH, you can probably go up either side of the artifact tree first. This is largely because Queen's Ascendant becomes mostly worthless when you don't use CH. Still, Decree of the Queen is stronger than tidal pools on almost every fight. But it won't be significant enough to make a real impact IMO. However, if you do plan on using CH a lot, then you should still make it a priority to go bottom for Decree first (so that you pick up Queen's Ascendant).

[Rezhka]

Paladins, Elemental Shamans, and a few other classes are completely saturated with negative players who thrive on drama. A lot of their criticism is warranted, but has been blown out of proportion. It's really painful to see 13/13M raiders type up 1000-word rants about how a class is "fucked" and dramatic personal stories that get tons of upvotes, when really they're not making any constructive suggestions. Or when their class gets buffed in a beta build, but it's not the massively huge buff *they* wanted, so they still whine with snarky comments anyway.

I'm ranting again, but In the midst of so much whining and doomsaying in the majority of class threads, all I can say is thank god for the Resto Shaman feedback threads.

Elemental get buffed? Yea, Elemental only get buffed just to be dropped dead to the ground later from the cloud nine. You should've read the official beta forum on Ele's feedback thread. So many beta tester post their constructive feedbacks there. But it's like they never fix what the majority has been addressed (our survivability on pvp, our shitty AoE, lackluster buffs management, clunky artifact traits). Yet, what they do is keep nerfing the numbers over and over again instead. While I agree there's much of drama negative Ele players out there, I believe it's more of because we're tired of being ignored. Oh wait, we're not completely ignored. With the nerfs keep coming, it means they still care about the spec, right?

I'm ranting because I see you ranting and pointed out specifically Elemental Shamans. If you can see how much the Ele Shaman thread being viewed to compare with Resto and Enhance, you can tell that the spec is really really in need of much attention.

[chandy]

Power of the Waves doesn't exist anymore. It actually hasn't existed for about 4 months now.

So I've been doing a lot of normal bosses, getting a feel for mana on actual duration fights. It's pretty safe to say that WS/HW will work as it's incredibly mana-efficient and still strong. CH builds just OoM you very fast. No one can really deny this on beta. There are still a few fights where mana is 'infinite' or where the fights are short enough such that CH spam can be done so it will still have a role. Also, you can't always use WS on every fight (not every fight has a ton of stacking) and so CH/High-tide or Ascendance will still play a role (and obviously in 5 mans)

https://www.warcraftlogs.com/reports...R#type=healing
https://www.warcraftlogs.com/reports...w#type=healing

Above are a few examples of 'longer' fights with WS/HW usage. With this type of build, you can last 2x longer in fights. Because WS also has travel time, it can be paired up with dropping a CBT immediately after the WS cast. AG vs CW will likely come down to personal preference (for a WS build). EST is strong, but may not always be an option. Torrent is still slightly stronger for me in a raid setting, but this could change depending on spell selection (and whether you pick CW) and so you have options on that tier as well. All-in-all, it is great to see a non-CH dominant build work very well as it just allows for more options.

The only other thing is that if you go WS/HW and sort of ignore CH, you can probably go up either side of the artifact tree first. This is largely because Queen's Ascendant becomes mostly worthless when you don't use CH. Still, Decree of the Queen is stronger than tidal pools on almost every fight. But it won't be significant enough to make a real impact IMO. However, if you do plan on using CH a lot, then you should still make it a priority to go bottom for Decree first (so that you pick up Queen's Ascendant).

That is very informative Gardiff. I guess the only question left is, with bottomless depths and a playstyle like this, how much of those healing waves can be replaced with healing surge? and will that match cloudburst's contribution?

[Gardiff]

It's just really difficult to answer that question. When you consider CBT, you have to also consider AG which procs from CBTs final burst heal. If you give up CBT, you are likely giving up 15% (or even slightly higher) of your output (if spec'd AG) as a result.

Does the extra mana gained from BD outweigh this? Well if you are not going OoM, then no it definetly won't. But even if you are OoMing, BD has a lot of problems. We already have a high baseline crit on healing surge, making any additional gains from BD very minimal. CH also will eventually crit 10% higher and we can easily achieve 25% crit or so on beta (not exactly optimal for HPS, but better for HPM), and so again BD will not provide much from CH. It might be interesting to use with Queen's Ascendant, but CH already crits (on average) per CH cast so I don't see how BD would further augment Queen's Ascendant.

If it is used at all, it's power is going to have to come from HW/riptide usage. HW in particular grants a large amount of mana back for how much it costs.

But just how do you estimate how many HWs are cast on sub 60% targets (and be sure to remove 1/4 of those (assuming you are sitting at 25% crit) since the ones that crit below 60% would have proc'd resurgence anyway). For riptide, it may be easier since its instant cast, but HW still has a 1.5-2.5 second cast time - someone who starts out sub 60% pre-cast might be above 60% by the time the cast hits in a raid setting. I really don't know how you would even begin to estimate something like this.

It will probably be something figured out on live from a large number of people testing it, but I can only really speak subjectively about it in that it was very underwhelming when I was using it early on in alpha, even with HW/riptide. I was seeing something like ~20% additional mana in these ~4-5 minute encounters but this absolutely does not translate into 15% output in any form because this doesn't take into account all sources of regen. I dunno, maybe others on beta who used it got more out of it, but I certainly did not.

I don't think using it would let you really substitute in very many healing surges at all for healing waves because again for me, I was still only getting MINIMAL gains from using bottomless depths.

Again, it works a little bit better with riptide since riptide is an instant cast, but the problem becomes that you will be losing out on a ton of healing if you are just holding onto riptides in hopes of finding a sub 60% target. It isn't worth it in this regard. But it is easier to work with. Healing wave, however, is not always fast (even if you go crashing waves) and if you happen to start a 2-2.5 second cast on someone who is hovering around 50% in a raid, chances are pretty good that person will go above 60% with HoTs and random passive heals (or other raid healers focusing that target), making bottomless depths much less valuable. And the last thing to consider is that when people are really low, chances are you WON'T be using healing wave / riptide to get people up - rather you will be relying more on CDs, wellspring, etc and a lot of these heals just don't work with BD.

[Bullettime]

It's just really difficult to answer that question. When you consider CBT, you have to also consider AG which procs from CBTs final burst heal. If you give up CBT, you are likely giving up 15% (or even slightly higher) of your output (if spec'd AG) as a result.

Does the extra mana gained from BD outweigh this? Well if you are not going OoM, then no it definetly won't. But even if you are OoMing, BD has a lot of problems. We already have a high baseline crit on healing surge, making any additional gains from BD very minimal. CH also will eventually crit 10% higher and we can easily achieve 25% crit or so on beta (not exactly optimal for HPS, but better for HPM), and so again BD will not provide much from CH. It might be interesting to use with Queen's Ascendant, but CH already crits (on average) per CH cast so I don't see how BD would further augment Queen's Ascendant.

If it is used at all, it's power is going to have to come from HW/riptide usage. HW in particular grants a large amount of mana back for how much it costs.

But just how do you estimate how many HWs are cast on sub 60% targets (and be sure to remove 1/4 of those (assuming you are sitting at 25% crit) since the ones that crit below 60% would have proc'd resurgence anyway). For riptide, it may be easier since its instant cast, but HW still has a 1.5-2.5 second cast time - someone who starts out sub 60% pre-cast might be above 60% by the time the cast hits in a raid setting. I really don't know how you would even begin to estimate something like this.

It will probably be something figured out on live from a large number of people testing it, but I can only really speak subjectively about it in that it was very underwhelming when I was using it early on in alpha, even with HW/riptide. I was seeing something like ~20% additional mana in these ~4-5 minute encounters but this absolutely does not translate into 15% output in any form because this doesn't take into account all sources of regen. I dunno, maybe others on beta who used it got more out of it, but I certainly did not.

I don't think using it would let you really substitute in very many healing surges at all for healing waves because again for me, I was still only getting MINIMAL gains from using bottomless depths.

Again, it works a little bit better with riptide since riptide is an instant cast, but the problem becomes that you will be losing out on a ton of healing if you are just holding onto riptides in hopes of finding a sub 60% target. It isn't worth it in this regard. But it is easier to work with. Healing wave, however, is not always fast (even if you go crashing waves) and if you happen to start a 2-2.5 second cast on someone who is hovering around 50% in a raid, chances are pretty good that person will go above 60% with HoTs and random passive heals (or other raid healers focusing that target), making bottomless depths much less valuable. And the last thing to consider is that when people are really low, chances are you WON'T be using healing wave / riptide to get people up - rather you will be relying more on CDs, wellspring, etc and a lot of these heals just don't work with BD.

From my testing experience, as a more casual and "average" Resto Shaman, I didn't find it to be much use either except maybe for 5 mans early on when groups are still learning mechanics since the extra damage people are taking will translate better into more mana to keep the heals coming.

That doesn't mean I found it that particularly useful though. I still preferred to have CBT for the low cooldown extra oomph, and the 60% threshold is too easily covered by hots and such in raid environments. And if it's more widespread large damage spikes, as you said, you'd generally be rolling something like Healing Tide, or having another raid cooldown at the time, to stabilize.

I MAY, extra emphasis on may, use BD for a short window in the initial gearing, but even in 5 mans I much preferred the Wellspring+CBT combo.

Again, can take this with a grain of salt though as I'm more of a run of the mill average Shaman than your battle hardened raiding one.

[Zeidia]

In live im playing as resto since tbc i've been hardcore raider until WoD , since then i do more casual things in pve and pvp with pugs (13/13 hc and 1,9k rat on 3s), but im not convinced to continue playing Resto since everyone is talking shit about resto shamans in pvp , and they are not the best healers in pve (maybe I'm wrong) , i like the playstyle of ele , but i did same question in elemental shamy post and they told me to stay as resto , so here comes the question: do you think Resto shamans are better as a main than ele in terms of performance? I don't mind not to play the best class but I don't like to be the worst heal in pvp only above the discipline priest , Idk what to do , thanks for your advices guys!

[Gardiff]

From my testing experience, as a more casual and "average" Resto Shaman, I didn't find it to be much use either except maybe for 5 mans early on when groups are still learning mechanics since the extra damage people are taking will translate better into more mana to keep the heals coming.

That doesn't mean I found it that particularly useful though. I still preferred to have CBT for the low cooldown extra oomph, and the 60% threshold is too easily covered by hots and such in raid environments. And if it's more widespread large damage spikes, as you said, you'd generally be rolling something like Healing Tide, or having another raid cooldown at the time, to stabilize.

I MAY, extra emphasis on may, use BD for a short window in the initial gearing, but even in 5 mans I much preferred the Wellspring+CBT combo.

Again, can take this with a grain of salt though as I'm more of a run of the mill average Shaman than your battle hardened raiding one.

That pretty much is how I feel (though in 5 mans I think I may stick with high tide or Ascendance) about bottomless depths.

It's pretty good that wellspring feels awesome even though it is not necessarily incredibly powerful or completely unique. It basically is a Halo clone (or divine star for that matter). It heals for about the same as Halo. Wellspring costs 2x as much per cast, but has a CD that is 1/2 of Halo. They both extend out to 30 yards, but of course the angle of wellspring does not cover everyone and so you have to have a better understanding of position sense when using it. It also has a slightly longer cast time.

But the reason why I like it a lot is because of cloudburst. If cloudburst wasn't there, I wouldn't be as enthusiastic about wellspring. Same thing with AG - if it didn't work in at least one form of CBT (either healing in or the final burst), I wouldn't be very enthusiastic about it either. It's just nice to see the class have a very different playstyle than it has in the past with massive CH spam (late expansion) or just playing whack-a-mole with healing wave (early expansion). It might be a wake up call for some, but once I got the hang of it, it was the most fun I have had with the class in a very long time.

[therealsoth]

Gardiff how are you handling early mythic dungeon levels (+3,4,5) with the heavy tank damage? I've tried playing rsham, rdruid, and hpriest all at 110 in these early mythic dungeons and I feel like rsham has the least amount of tools to keep a tank from dying. Feels like i'm always playing catch up, but I could be missing something really important. What's your typical reaction when a tank drops to 50%, you HS, and then he drops to 30%? That's where I get scared.

For reference, all 3 characters are about 835 ilvl

[Stormspellz]

This was one of the first concerns brought up with the new SLT I feel like if they haven't said anything about it yet no changes are going to be made.

we are supposed to get be getting a glyph for it that

[Gardiff]

Gardiff how are you handling early mythic dungeon levels (+3,4,5) with the heavy tank damage? I've tried playing rsham, rdruid, and hpriest all at 110 in these early mythic dungeons and I feel like rsham has the least amount of tools to keep a tank from dying. Feels like i'm always playing catch up, but I could be missing something really important. What's your typical reaction when a tank drops to 50%, you HS, and then he drops to 30%? That's where I get scared.

For reference, all 3 characters are about 835 ilvl

I did them much more about a month ago and in alpha, but I have stopped since then so that I don't burn myself out before live. So some of this might be different now. But when I was doing them, I did not have any issues for anything Mythic +7-8 and below assuming the affixes were not horrible.

The only time I felt really bad was when tyrannical was out. In early alpha, tyrannical was part of the normal affix pool so it would wreck runs. Now, tyrannical only shows in +10, so I can't really comment on that. I imagine we will struggle heavily with it, but I am not really sure.

My general set-up was Undulation (HS+HW would make up about 35-45% if not running triple melee so that easily beats Torrent), Graceful Spirit (there was no feasible way for me to take WRT in a dungeon, let alone raids), Cap totem (this is crucial - if your group can pull off 3 AoE stuns every trash pull, you prevent a ton of damage from occuring), AG (this was when CW was a 15% buff and 0 additional charges - now it grants 1 additional charge so if I were doing dungeons now, I probably would pick CW), Vigor (EST is not good in dungeons, and APT is no where near as useful compared to Vigor), CBT (obvious), and High-tide or Ascendance (depended on comp).

SLT for me was strictly used for the tank. I basically would spam heal the tank for the most part on each pull and let CBT take care of everyone else along with HST / riptides. This usually worked out for me in the level that I was testing.

However, I was roughly 845-850 when doing the harder versions (7-8) and I had 6 or 7 sockets. That could be part of the difference as well. Also, I was running with a group that generally ran Challenge Modes hard in WoD (and I ran them pretty hard in MoP). So all of us sort of had the mindset to understand the abilities of every trash and what was and wasn't dangerous.

For instance, in arcway, there are about 4 trash pulls that I know the tank will get wrecked. Two of them come when going to the Fel Lord boss and they both involve the 2 Fel Lord trash pulls which put mortal strike on the tank. There is another one in the construct boss (where you sit in 50% haste bubbles) which put a very bad DoT on the tank and just hit hard. Then there was the stuff right before the spider room that also hit the tank hard.

Another example was early on in alpha for certain bosses. The first boss in vault of the wardens was insanely difficult in terms of tank damage. Another one was in neltharions lair, 3rd boss which would demolish tanks at +7-8, routinely meleeing for 1 million per swing. There really wasn't we could do much in these types of scenarios, but luckily they have become less and less. But still, even in nelths lair now, I am cognizant of the trash before the 2nd boss with the giant crystalline mobs which put a massive frontal cone DoT on the tank which can tick for a very high amount. I realize ahead of time that I will need to save CDs for a pull like that and make sure they are up for it. Otherwise, like you said again, its just HS since you don't have much else to work off of.

Basically, I tried to anticipate which pulls I know a tank will get wrecked and plan accordingly. I will try to save an SLT/AG and HS/CBT spam for those types of pulls. If the tank dipping shows up randomly and you don't have those CDs up, you can be pretty much out of luck.

Also I know of a couple other shaman who are running +10 +11 +12, and they say they are able to manage. But I have not tried those out so I don't really know.

Honestly the tank damage was not the worst of it. The most difficult thing for me was when certain bosses would put massive hurting abilities on non-tanks since in higher mythic+, these start ticking for insane damage. One in particular was darkheart thicket, final boss who can place a DoT on any random member (you would HOPE it goes on the tank) which ticks for something like 400-500k a second at +6-7, and in these scenarios, I don't really know what to do. But to be fair, I don't know what any healer would do in a situation like this.

[therealsoth]

Thanks for the detailed response Gardiff. I'm going to try some of the talents you mentioned and try to find a group with some CM experience. Appreciate the help!

[Gardiff]

Yup no problem.

I really hope they don't change CBT to accept no overhealing. That is really the key reason why wellspring works pretty well. CH doesn't really need to worry about that component since it doesn't really overheal, but WS does tend to naturally overheal quite a bit.

[tallulah]

is there any stream i can watch or good video of legion resto shaman you guys could link

[heltvild]

Really liking the CBT + Wellspring combo so far, seems like there is some viable playstyles in Legion besides just the usual shaman CH spam.

[Zirhark]

Can anyone tell me what the proc rate of Tidal totem is? Is it RPPM or just a flat proc chance?

I also seem to notice it popping up quite a bit since a couple builds ago but that also just might be in my head so if anyone can confirm or deny if they've changed that recently that would be awesome.

[Emojuice]

15% looking at this https://healiocentric.wordpress.com/...t-gold-medals/

Not sure if it's been changed.

[Axelond]

The fix to tidal totem seems to have made it a pretty good trait. I just did normal nighthold with 850 and full artifact. It's not super good but it did 3.24% on Trilliax vs 2.37% for Queen's Decree and 1.46% on Chronomatic Anomaly vs 0.66% Queen's Decree. So It might be better going left side of artifact considering the normal traits on left side are way better than right side. Logs are private so maybe someone else can report if they see the same.