Legion Restoration Shaman Alpha Discussion

[Gardiff]

The changes do make tidal totems more attractive. But the reality is, the 2nd gold trait is achievable in about 3 weeks - 1 month of being 110 meaning you will likely have 2 gold traits by the time you make it to the first mythic raid boss if you work hard. So in reality, you are debating the paths for the purposes of 5 mans.

In 5 mans, I would say right path easily beats out left path considering healing rain isn't used at all in 5 mans (or very rarely), HW+HS generally close in on 35-40% of your output (for me at least) in higher mythic+ with undulation (buffeting waves > pull of the sea here) and HST plays a bigger role in 5 mans. That and Tidal Totems is still god awful in 5 mans even with the changes given its small radius, frequent movement involved, etc. So personally, I am still sticking with bottom path to begin for dungeons and what-not.

Either way, it still isn't going to make any meaningful difference.

But I suspect Tidal totems will beat out Decree on Nythendra (guaranteed, was actually close to 5% of my output on mythic testing and this was before the fix a few months ago), Ursoc (depending on who you riptide), and Xavius (depending on how hard you stack). For dragons, the spider boss, cenarius, and il'gynoth there was just too much movement and not enough stacking and I think at most tidal totems will be just equivalent to Decree. But again, I don't see how we won't have 2 gold traits by this point so I don't even get the point of trying to figure it out too much hah.

For nighthold, it won't matter since we will probably be nearing (or will have reached) our 3rd gold artifact by the time it comes out.

[Deleted]

Any in beta got any thoughts on the level 100 talents? Ascendance Vs. High Tide Vs. Wellspring?

Wellspring looks fun purely because it's a new mechanic for us compared to High Tide which we've seen before, and Ascendance. Is it worth taking though?

[tallulah]

Cloudburst Totem now stores 25% of healing (was 30%)
it happened!
i got into beta yesterday im not 110 yet, if someone test it in raid and could tell us if this change will impact which talent we're picking, it would be appreciated

[heltvild]

Cloudburst Totem now stores 25% of healing (was 30%).
Tidal Totem healing increased by 25%, but now heals up to 6 targets.

Ye so little hotfixes happend. 25% on CBT should still be fine as long as its accepts overhealing right?

[Zirhark]

Cloudburst Totem now stores 25% of healing (was 30%).
Tidal Totem healing increased by 25%, but now heals up to 6 targets.

Ye so little hotfixes happend. 25% on CBT should still be fine as long as its accepts overhealing right?

Just tested it, it still accepts overhealing.

[trm90]

Any in beta got any thoughts on the level 100 talents? Ascendance Vs. High Tide Vs. Wellspring?

Wellspring looks fun purely because it's a new mechanic for us compared to High Tide which we've seen before, and Ascendance. Is it worth taking though?

I'm gonna stick to WS for a while, then possibly swap to high tide once I have more mana and/or the CH legendary to make the most of it. I'm also happy to stick to WS just for the sake of changing the Resto playstyle :P

I'd only take Ascendance if a) the rest of my raid team is lacking healing CDs (unlikely, but if you only have e.g. a DIsc Priest and a Holy Paladin, you might run into trouble), b) Mythic+, or c) AG and/or CBT and/or Wellspring get nerfed.

[Gardiff]

Just a note about wellspring that I thought was worth mentioning here since I incorrectly originally thought the cap for it was way higher. WS actually caps at 6 targets. This means the maximum it can ever actually heal (before secondaries) is 1800% SP. This costs 7% mana. For reference, CH w/ high tide is ~1483% SP and only costs 5% mana. You cannot test this on random people in a city - for them to be considered a 'target' they have to be actually injured.

So for example, if you hit exactly 6 injured targets with WS and hit 14 other targets who are at 100% health, then those 14 targets are each hit for the full 300% (all overhealed). If instead you hit 12 injured targets with WS and hit 8 other targets who are at 100% health, then those 8 targets are each only hit for 150% (all overhealed) since 1800/12 = 150%.

What makes WS good right now is that you can force all of its healing into CBT through purposeful overhealing (but still useful healing). BUT, if you use it to heal a raid that has 20 targets who have taken damage, it will split that 1800% sp over 20 targets which is incredibly weak because you get no overhealing bonus. This would be 90% SP per person. The resultant CBT will only absorb 25% of this or 450%.

Contrast this to the first example of hitting 6 targets and overhealing on 14. CBT in this case, because it takes overheal, will absorb 1500% SP (450% from the 6 targets healed and 1050% from the overheal).

My point is, if you are going to try using WS on live for fights tomorrow (I wouldn't really recommend it at this point if you are on heavy farm mode of HFC), then absolutely DO NOT use WS ever to actually heal 20 targets (i.e. 20 targets take damage from a massive raid pulse). Instead, use it before the big raid AoE goes out and when there are only ~6 (ideally) injured people so that you can put all that extra healing into CBT. If you don't do this, you are essentially only using WS at ~2/3 of its actual power (2250% vs 3300%). It is true that if you are healing more injured targets (20 vs 6), you have more opportunities for mastery to kick in (which obviously has no effect on 100% overhealed targets). But you would need an inordinate amount of mastery and the right health threshold for wellspring to be used for healing up an actual raid-wide AoE ability and I don't see that happening on live or from beta raids. And in situations like this, HT would be superior anyway. In reality, it is hard to hit '6 targets' on a live fight. But the point is, don't just use WS after the big raid-wide AoE goes out - instead, use it appropriately a few seconds prior to the raid-wide AoE where WS might hit ~6-10 targets (iskar healing debuffs coming out seconds prior to a chakram, or fel surges on ~5-6 targets in xhul prior to one of his raid-wide pulses in the final phase) so that all the extra overhealing in CBT can be used on the subsequent upcoming burst.

WS is largely propped up by AG/CBT and specifically from the fact that they both accept overhealing and convert it into 'semi-smart' healing. If either of the overhealing components get nerfed for either CD, WS is essentially a dead talent. It already is very weak on its own for a talent (high-tide CH is higher HPM when not including the overhealing components but is not as high HPM when you include the overhealing components and using this overhealing with CBT/AG). You just have to make sure you use it properly.

The whole WS/AG/CBT combo is incredibly efficient and strong if done right and I am not trying to downplay it (it can almost rival HTT and can sometimes beat it depending on how much overhealing the second half of HTT does - remember both CBT/AG are semi-smart and they generally don't overheal in contrast to HTT/Ascendance), but rather just explain if you use WS in isolation or for healing up a large # of targets, you won't get good mileage out of the ability. It takes a bit getting used to.

Here is an example:
https://www.warcraftlogs.com/reports...77&end=1554625

Look how powerful AG, CBT, WS (and other smaller spells) can be if used in the appropriate scenario. I actually screwed up big here in that I did not recall the final CBT while AG was still up as I was off about 1/2 a second. Had I done this, I would have had an additional ~1.4 million AG. I only healed 7 targets with WS, while overhealing on 14 targets. This in turn gave me a massive CBT, a massive AG and of course the WS itself. Altogether it did 5 million healing, but should have been higher if I timed things right. This one situation right here is almost 10% of my healing in a 6:48 kill and had I not screwed it up again later, the other 2 times could have been similar. It isn't weak if done right, it just takes a lot getting used to in how to maximize your output.

But still, what is important to realize is that this also means WS is less likely to be used on fights that have constant ticking damage even if you are relatively stacked for the majority of the fight and can still pair it with AG/CBT. This is because on fights like this, you will rarely get a chance to overheal with it, so high-tide will be a better option. In contrast, on fights where there is occasional periods of burst healing required, WS will still have a role (as above). But there is a bit of a learning curve to really get a good grasp of when/how to use all three abilities. I am still getting used to it, as evident by that log and messing up the CBT pop with AG.

[fallenangel-succ]

This sounds like a borderline exploit, and certainly a broken mechanism. I'm sure some will view this has a way to show skill but I highly doubt this is intended.

[Taeldorian]

This sounds like a borderline exploit, and certainly a broken mechanism. I'm sure some will view this has a way to show skill but I highly doubt this is intended.

Things like this arent an exploit. Using an ability to boost the power of another ability is considered a skillcap and not an exploit at all. If it was, it certainly would have been fixed by now considering Gardiff and other shamans have been discussing it in the beta forums and here many times.

[Isheria]

You can be almost sure this will get nerfed when blizzard sees that people use wellspring as an 100% overheal intentionally almost exclusively in order to boost cloudburst totem.

[fallenangel-succ]

I don't mean exploit in the "this is bannable" way. It just doesn't make sense that they'd want to reward you for overhealing just because of the weird interactions that WS has with the number of targets that it heals.
Overall it's healthier for the game that these sort of things are removed. I hope you see how having more benefit from casting your heal specifically when the raid is at high HP is not sign of a good design.

[tallulah]

You can be almost sure this will get nerfed when blizzard sees that people use wellspring as an 100% overheal intentionally almost exclusively in order to boost cloudburst totem.

you do realize that if CBT wasnt taking in account overhealing it would be a worthless ability?

[Jotaux]

Resto is my off spec so I haven't done too much with it in the beta aside from a few dungeons. Are you guys saying that all of the overhealing goes into cloudburst totem and not just 25%?

edit: maybe you are saying that wellspring doesn't count overhealing in it's healing cap.

[fallenangel-succ]

you do realize that if CBT wasnt taking in account overhealing it would be a worthless ability?

The issue isn't with cloudburst taking overhealing into account. It's that WS contributes more to it when you cast it when the raid is at full HP than when everybody is low.

[Isheria]

you do realize that if CBT wasnt taking in account overhealing it would be a worthless ability?

Maybe you should reread what you quoted, cloudburst storing overhealing is not broken, what is broken is using wellspring intentionally wrong to boost cloudburst because it can heal an unlimited amount of targets if they are at full hp.

[Gardiff]

If CBT and AG were not intended to take overhealing into account, then they would have curbed it this expansion (WoD) as both of these spells have ALWAYS done this. Even though CBT hasn't been used in WoD since it has been over-shadowed by HT, AG in particular has always acted like this and people have taken advantage of it in the past a few times. Heck, even Ascendance has worked like this since its inception. I don't think blizzard is blind to this, given that these spells have been doing this for multiple expansions. However, what is new is the addition of WS which brings the absurdity to a whole other level.

And because of the addition of WS, I absolutely would prefer if these spells would just stop taking WS overhealing into account because its silly that the best way to use WS is not the way that intuitively makes sense. However, just removing the overheal component for WS would require a substantial buff to WS to make that tier remain competitive. A 7% mana cost for an 1800% heal is very weak when you consider that on that same tier of talents, I can just pick up a passive CH talent which makes my CH's have higher HPM (and HPS since it can be spammed). Not only that, but WS has 0 bonuses or interactions with our artifacts (outside of the initial one which affects all heals) meaning that CH will pull even further ahead as soon as we start picking up the crit or haste artifact talent.

But to do all of these changes with just 1 month left before live hits (nerf the overhealing / buff WS)... I have my doubts. Or if something does happen, what is more likely to occur is that the overhealing will be curbed without any change to wellspring which will just result in everyone picking cookie cutter high tide for another expansion.

Many of us have posted this over and over about the overhealing thing with AG/CBT for many months now in the alpha / beta threads and how there is potential for playing in ways that are probably not intentional with wellspring. The overhealing abuse doesn't occur with our other basic healing spells since they don't tend to overheal really at all, and if you are trying to overheal intentionally, you don't magically gain output like you do with WS.

[tallulah]

ohhh sorry i read wrong,but yes you are right , im sure blizz didint want us to use WS for it overhealing, but im sure they are already aware of the situation. i just dont know how they cant fix this without making CBT weak, lets see

[Gardiff]

On one hand, there have been so few changes across the healers as a whole for the last ~1.5 months that I almost feel like they are content with what is out right now and there won't be any major changes.

On the other hand, I thought CBT was gonna get nerfed last week and it was then hotfixed to 25% just a few days ago. That makes me think that they realize there are still problems and so they MIGHT fix this WS stuff before live, but it would require them to adjust 3 things and then WS would still need a buff if they wanted it to remain competitive / useful.

So I guess we won't really know anything for sure until that expansion launch in 6 weeks.

[chandy]

They don't have to do anything with overhealing. All they need to do is make wellspring + cloudburst do better healing when mastery kicks in ie. it is better to use the heal like it is intended than to fudge the values with not triggering diminishing returns.

We already have weird exceptions with our stuff kinda like how unleash affects chain heal but not wellspring. We don't need cloudburst accepting all overhealing except with wellspring or how decree doesn't scale with secondary stats. These things get confusing.

[ItsTiddles]

decree doesn't scale with secondary stats

I didn't realize it didn't scale with secondary stats... That's a little upsetting. Is it still worth prioritizing or should be the last one?