Beginning of the End (resto shamans)

[shammypie]

Its that time of year when Resto Shamans switch from being really good to being really bad. All the healers are geared up and everyone has gotten a hand on all the new mechanics. Furthermore with disc priests and paladins doing so well now it makes cleaning up after way too easy. Furthermore taking a look ahead looks like the fights will be very shaman unfriendly. Many of us will turn to pvp to find that our top status is slightly tarnished right now. Some will try to dps and find ele sorely lacking and enhance difficult to re-gear and still not quite there.

now many of us will continue on, after all if your not in a top progression guild it really doesn't matter which class you roll since it all pretty much evens out. some haven't even really noticed the paradigm shift yet. but what do you do when your best is no longer good enough?

Will you reroll to an alt? simply go more casual for the time being? Maybe even take up some of the smaller things in wow like capping you reps, pet battles, or figuring out how to kill that dam undeadd guitar playing laser shark thingy

[SqueektheWeek]

shamans are like rogues; good in the beginning of an xpac, weaksauce in the mid, and I'M BBBBBAAAAAACCCCCCKKKKKKKK at the end of an xpac.

[Vulpei]

Does 'top status is slightly tarnished' mean you are still the best healer, just only 50% better than anyone rather than 100%? Seems pretty weak to me to be changing toons because you aren't the top undisputed champion, just top mostly undisputed champion.

[mrinvisable2]

resto works like this imba @ progression ok @ farm where it doesnt matter

[Deleted]

Alt all the way. I'm hanging in there as Elemental, since our 10m group really can't have another melee, but I'm having a ton of fun on my Hunter. Perhaps I'll swap completely, there's no Mail Agi taker anyway and allows us to gear our Resto Shaman quicker.

[xenbrandris]

shamans are like rogues; good in the beginning of an xpac, weaksauce in the mid, and I'M BBBBBAAAAAACCCCCCKKKKKKKK at the end of an xpac.

That made me " LOL " . So true

[kustom]

Resto was amazing in Ulduar. Logic broken.

[Seriss]

Resto was amazing in Ulduar. Logic broken.

We didn't play the same Ulduar then, it seems. Shaman needed major buffs to even be able to do a bare minimum of AoE-healing without instantly ooming, and even then it was horrible. If you brought any other class, you were better off. I was the only restoshaman in the guild to survive the transition from Sunwell through Ulduar and beyond. And we all know that any guild that cleared Sunwell had an easy half dozen of resto shamans in the roster (who promptly rerolled or paused during Ulduar - at least the majority of shamans I knew did that.).

[lopk]

but what do you do when your best is no longer good enough?

I don't know, but that would be a terrible, terrible day that hasn't, isn't, and will not be upon us. Ever.

Doomsaying is appropriate to an extent, but puh-lease.

[yopax]

Well; I'm with the OP. Unfortunately. Has been running my shadow/disc priest through LFR the last couple of weeks, just to have a back-up plan, but would really prefer to stay Resto (PVE).

Healing 10 man (6/16 HC) with a Holy Pala and Monk, its hard to keep up on fights that are not very stationary and/or a raid group fairly stacked up. And when we need to bench a healer for some of the HC fights, there's no discussion if the Pala stays or not. Harder to keep a spot at the moment, although Sprit Link and Healing Tide are still a great cooldowns.

I am not asking for miracles though; maybe a boost to riptide for those spread/movement fights.

[Landos]

Well; I'm with the OP. Unfortunately. Has been running my shadow/disc priest through LFR the last couple of weeks, just to have a back-up plan, but would really prefer to stay Resto (PVE).

Healing 10 man (6/16 HC) with a Holy Pala and Monk, its hard to keep up on fights that are not very stationary and/or a raid group fairly stacked up. And when we need to bench a healer for some of the HC fights, there's no discussion if the Pala stays or not. Harder to keep a spot at the moment, although Sprit Link and Healing Tide are still a great cooldowns.

I am not asking for miracles though; maybe a boost to riptide for those spread/movement fights.

I'm currently at 5/16 hc in a 10 men raid, and healing with double disc or disc/resto druid ... It's piratically impossible to beat the disc's because of spirit shell ... I'm almost at the same amount effectiv heal or on top of them, but there is always 4-8 mio. spirit shell absorb that causes the healing meters looks like crap. I switch to my holy paladin 6 weeks ago and switched back to my resto shaman last week cause i prefer the play style and does have some emotional bounds to my old main character ...

We kill the bosses, this is the most important kill and so i contribute my part to the success, but it doesn't feel good that I'm not able to beat the discs because of one freaking spell ... I can do some improvement to my play style and my UI, and my gear is lacking a bit ... But I feel, that there is no way to beat them at this point ... Unless fights like Gara'jal were the raid is grouped up an I can time the CD's perfect. Does somebody have any experience how to heal with a disc in a efficient way?

[Poysonivy]

shamans are like rogues; good in the beginning of an xpac, weaksauce in the mid, and I'M BBBBBAAAAAACCCCCCKKKKKKKK at the end of an xpac.

Yeah our guild saw that in DS. That was very Rshaman friendly raid content. I still enjoy switching from Mage to Rshaman tho. Only my shamans current guild lacks a bit of activity and it might be a good idea to move on.

To the poster above: I think every healer brings its own special set of spells with the standard ones all have. Spirit Link and HTT are great cooldowns. As is Ascendancy.
But a buff to say Riptide or unleash life (healing part) would be awesome for the moving bits.

[shammypie]

We kill the bosses, this is the most important kill and so i contribute my part to the success, but it doesn't feel good that I'm not able to beat the discs because of one freaking spell ... I can do some improvement to my play style and my UI, and my gear is lacking a bit ... But I feel, that there is no way to beat them at this point ... Unless fights like Gara'jal were the raid is grouped up an I can time the CD's perfect. Does somebody have any experience how to heal with a disc in a efficient way?

yeah im running 25 mans and i went from no priests to two of them and a second holy paladin. Now suddenly my numbers are half of what they used to be and i'm getting yelled at to do better when there is nothing to do. I hate that crap, shamans have a bunch of limitations that i just hate even though i love the playstyle. but my biggest gripe is our mastery because its so easy to fix into something better and less finicky but its one of those things you know will never change and ever since i first saw it in cata i knew it was the beginning of the end.

During farm fights other healers would push themselves to see how much they can get out of their gear and how the next tier will fair. During farm fights i just sit there not caring about anything with no idea how well i can do. Then progression kicks in and for a few weeks you see new heights to your healing. After that is a slow degradation and increasing feeling of impotence.

I love my shaman, i just feel like we are treated like garbage. We get our designated time in the sun to make us feel special and great and then we are back in the gutter until everyone gets bored and starts leaving. Then it repeats

[gwenners]

Doing 10m hardmodes as resto this tier is terrible, we are garbage tier with holy priests in 10s with similar problems (mana regen, balanced around huge throughput cds). I feel that Blizzard has to walk a fine line given how OP resto is in arena and rbgs, so I don't really foresee and pve buffs forthcoming.

The complete lack of thought put into the talent system for resto is amazing. No resto shamans take elemental blast yet it's only being retooled to be attractive for enhance. 60 is a complete dog tier for resto given how poor haste is for us and the state of our regen.

[Landos]

It feels like our HPS is heavily depending on our CD usage ... I'll catch myself not using our big CD's like healingtide and ascendance twice in a fight, this would push my hps a lot ... but I feel bad when i use my CD's without the "oh-shit" moment... But change the mastery to a hot or a shield would help a lot + a little singeltarget cd like ironbark (or maybe change stone bulwark totem to a targetable shield) would be absolutely awesome. I like what they did with the resto shaman in mop, but I felt stronger back in cata!

[Holofernes]

its not that bad as u make it seem. Hps aint everything, its more important to get the stuff done.

Shaman still is ok to get the job done, in comparison to druid / paladin we are in line, but i admit that diszipline priests and to a lesser extent mistweavers are over the top atm.

and yeah atm no healer is able to contest a discipline priest that knows what he is doing.
Especially in farm raids, were the existence of disc cuts shaman effectivity.
But imo its the best option for progress, as disc absorbs, shamans hp gain + its mastery together are VERY strong in avoiding deaths.
I am happy to play with the disc, although it means he cuts my hps done by a good percentage. I havnt got any rankings aslong as he is around.

Annoying is mana regen of shaman compared to disc. Its a little weak, but still in line with other healers i would say, but disc mana is over the top atm.
Yesterday was the first time i saw him ooming too, for a very long time, at lei shi hc progress.

And to the guy who wrote about shaman beeing top in Ulduar:
LOL. i remember my hps beeing easily doubled by druids back than.
Shaman had MAJOR mana problems back than, i was full of mp5 gear + sockets, some shamans used int sockets for greater mana pool to go oom later, while every other healer was on full throughput gearing.. And i still remember awfully dying to mimiron hc phase 1 plasma attack because i couldnt keep myself up against the dot. Luckily, there came a big buff to shaman regen shortly after.

[Pitkanen]

I chuckled. Disc is getting nerfed (not enough yet through), and part of that nerf is MTT - Rapture synergy. So while that disc is kicking you in the teeth they are drinking from your mana pole and getting more than anybody should from it (2 rapture procs from a single totem from my raid buffed 14k spirit, rapture should return 112k mana from mana tide alone).

Farm content is lolz. Of course shielders will win if you overheal it.

Resto shamans are in the top 3 healing specs right now, and without nerfs that isn't going to change. Elemental Mastery is down to 1 min CD in 5.2, which means you can pop it with HTT and then again when you use Ascedance, allowing you to stagger your throughput CDs without weakening either. We'll have better burst healing in 5.2, our mastery/crit scaling is better than most healers, and the 10% health-SLT-MTT-Stormlash utility isn't going away.

[rmlunsford]

Resto shamans are in the top 3 healing specs right now

Defined how?

[Pitkanen]

Defined how?

Number being brought to heroic raiding. In 25 mans they are tied with pallies as the most common spec doing 25H content. Combining priest specs gives you that overall there are slightly more priests. Either way, shaman's are in the top3 specs from the perspective of guilds doing 25 man content, because that's what the dedicated players are playing. (raidbots, all parses) Looking at the top100 parses to filter out the farm sadness, shamans are #3 on throughput.

I will say that the only Manditory class this tier is disc. But clearly, shaman's bring enough output + utility to the table that heroic minded raiders want to play them and heroic progression guilds want to bring them.

[Dorac]

In my 25 man guild we have a 6 heal roster. Double Disc, Double Rsham, Mistweaver monk and Rdruid. So in terms of sitting it isnt bad at all. Double Disc though is pretty nice for progression, although they soak up like everything on farm. I have a decent ele set/reforge save and can still manage top 12 on our damage done on some fights. I do have a mage alt though that Im trying to do LFRs in just incase. But yes a possible small change in our mastery would be cool. I do love it for progression but it just doesnt do much on farm and takes some of the fun away. But I would agree with the other comment in saying I believe Rshams are definitely up there top 3 for progression still. Our burst healing and smart heals are very nice.