Legion Restoration Shaman Alpha Discussion

[ItsTiddles]

How do you generally use Cloudburst? I find I'm never happy with the results when it expires or I pick it up. Is it essentially the same healing as normal (i.e.: Riptide on CD basically, keep HR down if it makes sense, HS/HW as needed)? Are you running any other talents to support it, or is it pretty solid with any other setup you'd want to go with?

I usually set it up to where it expires 4-5 seconds after a damage burst, so there's a little bit of time for mastery to take effect but not enough time for someone to die to another mechanic. For talents I don't really work around cloudburst as much as I do chain heal. Torrent/Deluge(Occasionally AG)/Vigor(for now, EST when we're a little more geared)/Hide Tide.

[Miga]

Do we have any thoughts regarding trinket choices that drop from the heroic dungeons? Currently it feels like i'm just trying to pick up as many as possible to keep my options open but it would be nice to narrow down the hunt a bit.

Looking forward to any discussion and reasoning you people can come up with.

[Nyel]

So am I missing something or is Queens Decree really weak?

It's like most of the artifact traits that have a built in heal.

[xerus]

What are people running for Mythic dungeons at the moment?

While I'm sure gear has some issue, I find myself struggling a bit more than expected especially when there is unavoidable aoe.

I haven't played shaman in years so my being out of practice is also probably a factor.

[Ragnarocket]

What are people running for Mythic dungeons at the moment?

While I'm sure gear has some issue, I find myself struggling a bit more than expected especially when there is unavoidable aoe.

I haven't played shaman in years so my being out of practice is also probably a factor.

Here is my current talent set up.

I admit that High Tide is probably unnecessary, but I've not needed an additional cooldown so I've avoided Ascendance at this time and Wellspring just really doesn't work in a 5 man setting. At least with High Tide I don't feel bad about the occasional Chain Heals I'm throwing out, and usually I'll be able to hit all the melee and an occasional ranged DPS with a single cast.

Healing
I've found the most success when I get a group of melee as the DPS. Not only are they great damage generally but as a Shaman it's great to have a stacked group to heal. Most of the time I'm running around popping Riptides on the tank to keep AV up as well as using the other Riptide that I have available from Echo on whichever other person is taking the most damage at the moment. Keep HST down constantly, which is easy with Echo, and if there is a good bit of damage + movement use Spiritwalker's Grace and feel free to drop down the second HST totem to help. Chain Heal isn't super useful in Dungeons, but you'll be using a lot of Healing Surge.

Cooldowns
You have a lot of CDs as a Shaman, so using them as needed will help out the group as a whole. The moment I see the group drop below 30/40% I drop Healing Tide. If I see the tank go down to 10/20% and he doesn't have a CD (I'm in TS with my tank usually) I'll throw Spirit Link down, usually there will be another melee around to help stabilize his health.

Other
I have a habit of popping in and out of Spirit Wolf form any time I need to make significant movement in a fight, I would have that somewhere you can press it quickly.

I also try to keep up a constant stream of interrupts on any target that is a caster. Any damage I can prevent is damage I don't have to heal back up. In addition, I'll always try to keep a Flame Shock up on the main damage target (and maybe another) and use the instant Lava Flow procs when I'm not in crunch time for heals. With my talent set up I have Earthgrab ready at all times in case we need some extra time (say we accidentally pull more mobs then intended).

[Blaek]

I've healed every Mythic dungeon multiple times now and this is the talent setup I'm using:

• Torrent
• GoW
• LST
• Deluge
• AV
• EotE
• High Tide

I find myself not using chain heal AS much as I'd like. Like others have said 80% of the time I'm spam healing Tanks to keep them up, Riptide, AV, and LST are life-savers. The two talents I'm considering swapping to for 5-mans would be Crashing Waves and maybe Ascendance. When I do use chain heal my current setup makes it very nice.

As for EotE vs. CBT - I simply cannot see myself changing. Double HST, LB(great when procs), and Riptide feels so good. I know the talent will lose some value in raids but for 5 mans it simply gives you so much more flexibility.

Overall I feel Resto is performing amazingly with my only complaint being our lack of a nice Tank CD, but if that's all I have to worry about I think we're in a great spot. I've seen a few people say Rsham feels weak compared to other healers or not as good, but I can easily keep everyone alive and get through "OH SHIT" moments on spread-fights just fine. I plan to start running Mythics on as Enh so I can see some new recruits for my raid Heal, then I should be able to gauge their effectiveness vs ours.

[Kargos]

I've healed heroic dungeons and will get to mythics tonight, but I'm curious what others have found about unleash life (besides the bad taste we get from previous expansions of it). After the buff to 45%, it looks much more competitive. After doing a bit of napkin math and a bit of play testing in heroic, I like it a lot better than torrent.

For one thing, it actually does more overall healing. You can get about 4-5 riptides in every 15 seconds (the cooldown for unleash life). Each riptide is 40% stronger with torrent. However, unleash life is cheaper than a riptide, does about the same amount of healing as a torrent riptide (main heal, not hot), and then increases the next heal by 45%, which can be huge for a big heal like healing surge (which is likely to crit with tidal waves) or chain heal.

Secondly, it gives a lot more flexibility in terms of when you want more healing. Riptide kind of limits you in splitting up the extra healing into these smaller heals. If you're trying to get a tank back up, which is pretty common in 5 mans, you'll find yourself overwriting that hot portion a lot just to get more tidal waves and extra torrent healing. For unleash life, you're able to pump more into a single target when necessary in a shorter period of time. I find with unleash life that I'm also more flexible about giving riptides to people who don't yet have it so as not to overwrite the hot; I can use a riptide, unleash life, and then surge/wave on someone low (thus bringing them up higher than without unleash life) and then feel comfortable enough to put a riptide on another target.

Here's what I'm considering for 5 mans right now:
* Unleash Life
* Graceful Spirit
* Lightning Surge Totem
* Crashing Waves or Ancestral Guidance (definitely not deluge -- how often do you cast healing rain and actually have players stay there in 5 mans?)
* Ancestral Vigor
* Echo of the Elements
* Ascendance or High Tide (Ascendance feels pretty powerful, but High Tide gives a bit more frequent aoe healing with unleash life)

EDIT: I played some mythics with the above build (CW and HT), and it worked amazingly well, had no problems (on my end at least, dps will always stand in stuff and get one-shot). I definitely liked UL better than torrent, and having crashing waves was definitely more useful than AG. I liked Ascendance, but with a 3 minute CD, High Tide was usually better.

[Menards]

I have been playing with Unleash Life / high tides in mythic dungeons trying to use a combo of Unleash Life --> 45% boosted chain heal and it's been working well. Chain heal is a monstrous heal already and the unleash bonus is awesome. It works on most fights - some spread ones of course it won't and I plan to use torrent / echo for those.

[Jooji]

I've healed every Mythic dungeon multiple times now and this is the talent setup I'm using:

• Torrent
• GoW
• LST
• Deluge
• AV
• EotE
• High Tide

I find myself not using chain heal AS much as I'd like. Like others have said 80% of the time I'm spam healing Tanks to keep them up, Riptide, AV, and LST are life-savers. The two talents I'm considering swapping to for 5-mans would be Crashing Waves and maybe Ascendance. When I do use chain heal my current setup makes it very nice.

As for EotE vs. CBT - I simply cannot see myself changing. Double HST, LB(great when procs), and Riptide feels so good. I know the talent will lose some value in raids but for 5 mans it simply gives you so much more flexibility.

Overall I feel Resto is performing amazingly with my only complaint being our lack of a nice Tank CD, but if that's all I have to worry about I think we're in a great spot. I've seen a few people say Rsham feels weak compared to other healers or not as good, but I can easily keep everyone alive and get through "OH SHIT" moments on spread-fights just fine. I plan to start running Mythics on as Enh so I can see some new recruits for my raid Heal, then I should be able to gauge their effectiveness vs ours.

I healed on my friend's holy paladin in a couple mythics today. After doing them on both characters, I think the mythics were a little easier on the holy paladin, but that was by and large part due to beacon. Sometimes you're afraid to spend 3-4 seconds away from the tank as a shaman since the only passive healing is riptide hot. With the paladin I felt much safer healing off the tank for a couple casts, then again maybe I just happened to have better tanks as well, who knows. Something that would be interesting is a stacking riptide. Maybe too strong for PvP idk, but it would be cool if riptide hot stacked x 2. Would help us with tank healing while still being able to give the rest of party more heals.

[Azelas]

My experience healing every mythic (except Arcway and Court of Stars yet) has been quite smooth, with a few bumps here and there, but no big deal honestly.

My talent build has been:

• Torrent
• Gust of Wind
• Earthgrab Totem (not that I really use it much, could switch tbh)
• Crashing Waves
• Ancestral Vigor
• Echo of the Elements
• Wellspring

The talent I'm most iffy about is Wellspring. It has served it's purpose, and I think it's a good spell for 5 mans actually. But High Tide seems like it's going to be superior for raiding, so I'm probably gonna change that when raiding time comes.

Basically I'm built for maxing out the power of Riptide. Double Riptide charge, plus increased initial heal from Riptide, and the spell giving 2 charges of Tidal Waves. I can keep the tank up pretty effectively while still having Riptide charges and fast heals to throw to the party. For raiding, I'm thinking of changing Wellspring for High Tide FOR SURE, and maybe Crashing Waves for Deluge, although I'm not entirely sure about this last one, I'm liking the double Tidal Waves. I'll probly end up doing it though.

The other ones are pretty straightforward. Except Earthgrab I guess which I don't really care about.

Basically I haven't been prioritizing Chain Heal in 5 mans at all. I find it only to be useful when there's at least 2 melee dps, as in other cases, people tend to be way too spread out. Spell will certainly be way more effective in raids, so I'm gonna change talents towards improving my chain heal when the time comes.

[Deleted]

I've healed all mythic except Suramar ones and it went smoothly. Due to having right side artifact talents and Tidal chains my build was:

• Undulation

• Graceful Spirit

• LST

• CW

• AV

• Echo

• Ascendence

With some points to the left part i'll probably go into torrent. I mainly aimed my build toward efficency with what I had, so thats why I went full Tidal Waves spec. With it I was for example able to heal 7 minute 1 boss in Wrath of azshara (ye crap dps was crap) without going oom. Main thing is to suppress you urges go top people in 2 sec. The only time I used HS was when tank was really getting a beating or when dps was really low. If they werent generally HST and RT + HW were enough to keep everyone alive. I found myself using CH very rarely, mosly as a filler when people had health missing and I wanted Tidal Waves.

For raiding i'll most likely change to:

• Torrent
• AG/Deluge (depending on the fight)
• Vigor/EST
• CBT
• Tide

[Rarch]

I've healed all mythic except Suramar ones and it went smoothly. Due to having right side artifact talents and Tidal chains my build was:

• Undulation

• Graceful Spirit

• LST

• CW

• AV

• Echo

• Ascendence

I've also done all the Mythics except Suramar multiple times, and this is basically what I use, except I use Torrent instead of Undulation. I've tried both, and I just like having a stronger instant heal (2 with EotE).

For anyone healing Mythic dungeons without Lightning Surge Totem, you're absolutely nuts. It's basically a free defensive CD on every single hard trash pack, and great utility for any boss with adds. i.e.: Extra interrupt for Odyn's add if you get it during the circle, stun wolf adds on Fenryr before they get out so your DPS can AoE burn, stun magma add on Dargrul so your melee can burn him instead of kiting, etc etc. I feel like if you were ever crazy enough to try and push Proving Grounds to 40+ just because, you know how important LST is. The amount of mana it can save you is truly incredible, highly recommend.

[ItsTiddles]

Currently I'm running:
-Undulation (Torrent if I have uber tanky tanks)
-Gust of Wind (too much fun, actually quite helpful sometimes)
-Lightning Surge Totem (super handy, imo)
-Ancestral Guidance (deluge on some fights with more boring damage intakes, I don't take crashing waves because I have more than enough stacks)
-Ancestral Vigor/Earth Shield Totem (depending on the fight/tank)
-Cloudburst Totem (personal preference, I'm use to the gameplay/mechanics of it)
-High Tide (I can see ascendance on certain fights, but with tide&cloudburst&AG&link, I don't feel like I have more than enough bursty heals)

After clearing all 10 mythics this week, chain heal was still my most used ability. It felt weak at first but now that I'm 845 with craploads of mastery, it's pretty helpful and is generally top 2/3 on my heals.

[Ragnarocket]

Currently I'm running:
-Undulation (Torrent if I have uber tanky tanks)
-Gust of Wind (too much fun, actually quite helpful sometimes)
-Lightning Surge Totem (super handy, imo)
-Ancestral Guidance (deluge on some fights with more boring damage intakes, I don't take crashing waves because I have more than enough stacks)
-Ancestral Vigor/Earth Shield Totem (depending on the fight/tank)
-Cloudburst Totem (personal preference, I'm use to the gameplay/mechanics of it)
-High Tide (I can see ascendance on certain fights, but with tide&cloudburst&AG&link, I don't feel like I have more than enough bursty heals)

After clearing all 10 mythics this week, chain heal was still my most used ability. It felt weak at first but now that I'm 845 with craploads of mastery, it's pretty helpful and is generally top 2/3 on my heals.

Do you use Gust of Wind ALL the time or just on certain fights? I find I prefer Graceful Spirit for the majority of fights and only certain mythics like the Dragon boss in Darkheart Thicket make me want to pick up Gust. I just really enjoy having that additional Spiritwalker's on occasion and I pop in and out of Ghost Wolf anytime I need to move.

[ItsTiddles]

Do you use Gust of Wind ALL the time or just on certain fights? I find I prefer Graceful Spirit for the majority of fights and only certain mythics like the Dragon boss in Darkheart Thicket make me want to pick up Gust. I just really enjoy having that additional Spiritwalker's on occasion and I pop in and out of Ghost Wolf anytime I need to move.

I'll be honest, I rarely ever feel the need to use Spiritwalker's Grace in dungeons. Most of our fights (with the exception of the weird stage ones like Heyla or Advisor Vandros) don't last long enough for more than one unless I pop it super early.

[harruin]

Anyone else getting the darkmoon deck? I've been having terrible luck with trinkets, and this one seems decent enough since obliterum has somewhat crashed price wise.

[FrogBow]

There's a thread on the wow forums where like 15 different people are claiming cloudburst doesn't count overhealing. Jesus. The misinformation is real.