Are you happy with where Resto Shamans stand?

[Rupart]

Simple question. Are you happy with where Resto Shamans are at in the PvE realm? Do you feel your HPS is adequate and comparable to other healers?

I notice not a lot of shamans topping charts especially on worldoflogs. 5.2 doesn't bring any buff to resto shaman that I saw, yet monks get a healing buff?

Thoughts?

[Sevyvia]

I can't say that I'm very happy, but I'm also not too unhappy. I feel like we're more limited in many of our responses than many other healers. Healing Rain, for example, is awesome.. But only if the raid is stacked. Similar situations of very good but limited scope repeat themselves with other spells.

[Deleted]

I can't say that I'm very happy, but I'm also not too unhappy. I feel like we're more limited in many of our responses than many other healers. Healing Rain, for example, is awesome.. But only if the raid is stacked. Similar situations of very good but limited scope repeat themselves with other spells.

Nothing wrong with Resto Shamans imo, unlike other healers we relie too much on our cooldowns. We are strongest when raid is stacked and our Healing Rain does 40-50% of the healing, spread fight we can be pretty weak but you learn how to heal through those parts.

[edlike]

I think shaman are in a good place. I wish that healing alongside a disc priest didn't nerf your #s, but looking at it from a "benefit of the raid" standpoint I'm absolutely ok with having spirit shield around.

[Bethan]

Well, we got more new cds than what we asked for in cata, and "mechanically" speaking resto seems fine. We have a lot of "burst" potential. Only possible "issue" I see with shaman atm is lack of absorb and big "tank cd", but I really don't think we need any of those to stay usefull, and giving every tool to every class would be pretty lame imho.

I really feel shaman toolkit is good enough to heal any hard (*) encounter. We might not often be "the best possible class" at any assignment (which is to be expected given there's 6 healing spec), but we're definitely "good enough". It's just that we're pretty bad at stealing heal to other classes once the content get easy enough : On easy fight you'll be low on meters (except if you can get that no other healer heal while you're using HTT), but healer shouldn't be balanced according to this.

* : not talking about "objectively hard" bosses, but more on "progression fight where pple are dying to stuff that is not enrage or huge personal mistake"

[edlike]

It's just that we're pretty bad at stealing heal to other classes once the content get easy enough : On easy fight you'll be low on meters (except if you can get that no other healer heal while you're using HTT), but healer shouldn't be balanced according to this.

Totally true. Healing progression? #'s look amazing. Healing farm content? Half the HPS of the disc priest.

[Tiberria]

The biggest strength that Shaman have is extremely strong raid utility. This is the main reason Resto has very high representation in high ranking heroic kills this tier.
-Stormlash Totem is a very big deal; each Stormlash you bring to the raid adds about 1% extra raid DPS that you are not getting from any other healing spec
-HTT and SLT (as well as Ascendance combined with SWG on high movement phases like on Lei Shi) gives at least 2 strong raid CDs that can be built into a raid CD rotation
-Mana Tide Totem is a very big deal. At my current Spirit levels, I give each healer in the raid 54,000 mana every 3 minutes. This is being taken away in 5.2, but the interaction between Mana Tide and Rapture for Disc priests gives them a ridiculous amount of extra mana. It basically means that a Disc priest gets around 55,000 extra mana per Rapture proc while MTT is up. If they time it perfectly, they get 110,000 mana every MTT use(lining 2 Raptures up during MTT), on top of the base regen. With 2 Resto Shaman, a Disc priest is potentially getting 328,000 mana every 3 minutes from MTT alone, which is absolutely ridiculous and a big reason why Disc output is so game breaking
-The 10% HP buff is something that is unique and no other spec brings.
-Tremor Totems are very important to some key fights this tier, meaning the more Shaman you have in, the easier it becomes. 4 Shaman in the raid completely trivializes P3 of heroic Shek'zeer.

From a pure output perspective, Shaman are kind of average to below average. The current aggregate numbers show them 5th of 6 healing specs in 25N/25H and 6th of 6 healing specs in 10N/10H. However, the difference between the 2nd and 6th highest spec is only about 10% in both difficulties, with Disc completely broken OP. When the difference is that small, utility comes into play, which is a big reason why Resto Shaman have high heroic raid kill representation.

Here are some of the major weaknesses that we still have.
-Still very much tethered to Healing Rain. It's an absolutely huge percentage of Shaman output, and when it can not be used effectively, we are the weakest healer. Glyphed Riptide helps, but it isn't enough and it often sucks so much mana that it isn't worthwhile.
-Chain Heal is pretty weak in MoP, to the point that it is often better to save the mana than cast it unless you are sitting on excess mana. It's an iconic spell, and I would like to see it have a larger part in our spell selection than it currently does.
-No real tank CD. SLT can be used as a ghetto tank CD, but is better used as a raid CD. Every other healer has more tank save options
-Strong single target healing throughput, but weaker mana longevity when single target bombing than any other healer. It makes us better off not being assigned to tank healing and instead switching to them for emergency low health bombs than being a full time single target healer
-Survivability CDs overall are weak compared to what Paladins and Druids have.
-The lack of any run speed increasing passive or talent is a huge oversight. Paladins, Druids, and Priests all have movement speed talent options/passive run speed abilities. Ghost Wolf is the only option we have (other than boot enchants), and it is pretty weak due to not being able to cast while in it. We desperately need a talent or passive option that gives 15% run speed.

[Veliladon]

From a pure output perspective, Shaman are kind of average to below average. The current aggregate numbers show them 5th of 6 healing specs in 25N/25H and 6th of 6 healing specs in 10N/10H. However, the difference between the 2nd and 6th highest spec is only about 10% in both difficulties, with Disc completely broken OP. When the difference is that small, utility comes into play, which is a big reason why Resto Shaman have high heroic raid kill representation.

In heroic raid progression where people take damage and actually dip under 50% health, shaman mastery is actually worth a damn. This doesn't happen when the content is trivialized.

The class needs to be fixed of its bipolarism between awesome output on challenging content and wet noodle output on trivial content.

[Madcap]

-Mana Tide Totem is a very big deal. At my current Spirit levels, I give each healer in the raid 54,000 mana every 3 minutes. This is being taken away in 5.2,

Did I miss a nerf to MTT in the patch notes?

[pouca]

Did I miss a nerf to MTT in the patch notes?

Same thing here, what's going on with MTT ?

[Tiberria]

Did I miss a nerf to MTT in the patch notes?

If you actually quoted/read the entire sentence instead of cutting the quote off mid sentence, you would see the intention

This is being taken away in 5.2, but the interaction between Mana Tide and Rapture for Disc priests gives them a ridiculous amount of extra mana.

No, Mana Tide isn't being nerfed for anyone but Disc Priests. For Disc Priests, it no longer scales up their Rapture returns while active (which was giving them a ridiculous amount of extra mana).

[Eijnar]

Shamans is quite strong atm., and just because you aren't seeing a lof of them topping wol (Hello disc / monks pre-nerf) we are one of the strongest healers from my pov.

Firstly - We provide a shitloads of cooldowns and utility (all though I dislike that I have to drop Storm Lash, and I enjoyed "pushing" my dps as any kind of healer the last exp.), and I do think that we got a bit too many. Don't get me wrong, I love the fact that we finally got a decent throughput CD HTT, but I truely dislike the fact that if you aren't using it alongside Primal Elementalist you are wasting quite a lot of healing. I find it retarded that Asc. is such a strong cooldown that it is rarely capable of doing less than 40-50% OH. I find it annoying that HR always constitutes for so much healing even when it is 70% overhealing simply because it is so strong.

2nd - While we might not be the "top dog" in regards to HPs we are kings of smart healing, and with the changes to HST, which has made it so ridicules strong that on some fights it can be #1-3 of your top heals. Don't get me wrong, I do think it is working quite well, but I am slightly annoyed by the fact that it is such a dull way of playing "pop totem every 15th sec, and see numbers" I want to play actively not just place totems, cast a HR and then be semi afk. since the rest of my arsenal either needs a few seconds to "get up and running" e.g. when you want to maximize Ascendance or HTT.

3rd: SLT - Whenever more than 15 ppl. is stacked it is by far, and by a large margin the strongest CD ingame, due to the way it works (assuming you aren't placing it like a mogoloid as in when it is too late and people will die from a tick / shadowbolt or whatever since everyone is too low) it is a life saviour.

However, currently I am not fond of my shaman. I hate the way that TC works where it went from last Exp. to be a useful tool that would scale with your gear, and give you a choice in regards how to play (spirit vs. throughput while relying on TC), and to now where it is mandatory currently, but unless there is being made some changes to it it will be disregarded somewhere around half way through the next content since it lacks the scaling to make it worthwhile (an issue with the static manapools).
I think that we got too many CDs (if you raid 25man Primal Elementalist is mandatory except for maybe 2 fights of the 16 fights), and is too dependent on our cooldowns in order to stay "competetive".

I think MTT needs a rework, and grant the shaman some additional benefit - so that we aren't popping it exclusively for the other healers (hello mr. disco, I know that will get "fixed") but I dislike the fact that every other healer got a personal mana CD, and we are being left behind playing buff bot.

Happy no, but compared to the dog shit that was rshaman on the beta we are in a fairly good spot.

[Madcap]

If you actually quoted/read the entire sentence instead of cutting the quote off mid sentence, you would see the intention

Don't blame others for your failure to communicate effectively in writing. I cut off the quote where I did for a reason. Your sentence structure was ambiguous at best. Perhaps English is not your first language. If so, take a look at an English grammar primer for the meaning of commas combined with conjunctions.


[User was infracted for this post]

[roflwaffle]

very middle of the pack. which i'm ok since that means we wont be nerfed to the ground any time soon

[Tiberria]

Don't blame others for your failure to communicate effectively in writing. I cut off the quote where I did for a reason. Your sentence structure was ambiguous at best. Perhaps English is not your first language. If so, take a look at an English grammar primer for the meaning of commas combined with conjunctions.

It may have been worded in a confusing manner, but cutting off quotes in the middle of a sentence is a good way to distort the meaning of a lot of statements.

[Asta]

Don't blame others for your failure to communicate effectively in writing. I cut off the quote where I did for a reason. Your sentence structure was ambiguous at best. Perhaps English is not your first language. If so, take a look at an English grammar primer for the meaning of commas combined with conjunctions.

I read it just fine, agreed not best way to word it but more than easy to read.

OT: So far I fairly happy with my resto sham, except as others have mentioned that with progression we shine but as farm comes along we fall far behind. HTT seems far too powerful (not complaining) but I do see nerfs coming for it eventually. I hate Primal Elementalist as the amount of mana being spent on placing it to use on other CD's, but for that reason I only use them early on during fights as later on I dont have the mana to use them for the boost.

[Hanyuu]

I was pretty unhappy all through Cata and eventually switched to a holy paladin and even leveled a monk at the start of mop (when another guy went back to healing on a paladin in our ten man). I really felt shamans were just awful in firelands.

All that being said, I've really been loving the shaman again in mop. The new talent system gives us a ton of cool downs to utilize. (My only gripe is how weak everything is compared to healing rain and how awful elemental blast is to resto). I've always been a bit jealous of how mobile resto druids are (one of the reasons i rolled a monk), but the changes to healing stream totem really make it a way to heal while moving. I really enjoy our new and old group totems (stormlash and mana tide). I feel like most classes need something like our telluric current glyph...mana free nukes are great for times when we don't need healing and the trade off is pretty small to get it. The extra hit points we give tanks is a really nice second mastery in a way. It gives us an unique advantage that is really similar to the paladin mastery in alot of ways. I've really come to appreciate the shaman mastery as well because it is there when you need it and not there when you don't. I guess yeah, if you are only doing easy fights or lfr, it won't shine as much, but then again, you don't need it if its not pushing you anyway.

After trying other healers more in depth, I really don't like the more rigid rotations of monks and druids. I really prefer making sequencing choices more which how paladins and shamans flow.

[Castif]

, yet monks get a healing buff?

Thoughts?

Monks are actually getting quite a few nerfs.. a 30sec cd on chi burst (their massive aoe healing in 25s) for example, but thats neither here nor there

Honestly I am happy more with my shaman in terms of what I bring to the raid in the form of cds and totems, less happy in that since we are completely disregarding haste this xpac that all my non aoe heals get sniped bad.. also fuck disc priests

[Deleted]

PVP: Resto makes me very happy

PVE: Resto shaman fights druids for the last place. On average 25% behind disci priests in 25m. In 25m a little ahead of resto druids, but still bad.

In 10m, like always, by far the worst healer.
http://raidbots.com/dpsbot/Overall_D...00000000111111

Conclusion: if you want to do PVP, be happy that resto is very viable.
For 25m raiding, yeah, resto is bad, with the druid buffs coming possibly again the worst healer. But you can at least compete to some extent and it sucks less because you can use HR more often.

For 10m raiding: what the hell, get the fucking hell out of there! Resto sucks in 10m, elemental anyway. If you have a choice, reroll as fast as possible. Even though all that mail int gear gets disenchanted.

[Deleted]

In PvE 5/10

I still hate that our totems are spells now, it would be a better idea if you can upgrade a totem to a "Great Healing Stream" or "Great Mana Tide" totem. Then you have a strong CD and we have a mix of our old and the new totem mechanic.

The only thing I'm still worried about is the fact, that shamans are so bad in healing the higher they raid (10m, 10m heroic, ...). Sure, my guild is successful and nobody dies in encounters , but when I see my position in recount, I'm just thinking: "Why?!".