Why is blizzard so stubborn about resto shaman spread heals?

[Deleted]

That is exactly the thing. People bring t13 as an example of shaman-dominant tier, but it was not. Outside of Madness, we had hard time catching up to holy paladins.

We were a solid 2nd place though, you can't claim we were the weakest. Telluric currents paired with Unleashed Lightning glyph in tier full of +%dmg encounters made for one nifty regen mechanic, allowing us to drop tons of spirit and go for throughput stats. Admittedly, we required lot's more thought and planning than other healers to max the numbers, but that's what was fun about the class - high skill cap with high reward.

I think, for a while now and maintain my claim, that the issue with the class is it's mastery. Not just because a general, vague, "it's bad". It is, but for a very good reason - it does not synergise with our toolkit at all. Hardly any other spec in the game has its mastery so disconnected with what the spec actually does. Blizzard want's us to be the stacked healers? FINE. Make our mastery play to that strength then. Right now, it's yielding the least exactly when we are supposed to shine - stacked phases.

[Tiberria]

That is exactly the thing. People bring t13 as an example of shaman-dominant tier, but it was not. Outside of Madness, we had hard time catching up to holy paladins.

We were a solid 2nd place though, you can't claim we were the weakest. Telluric currents paired with Unleashed Lightning glyph in tier full of +%dmg encounters made for one nifty regen mechanic, allowing us to drop tons of spirit and go for throughput stats. Admittedly, we required lot's more thought and planning than other healers to max the numbers, but that's what was fun about the class - high skill cap with high reward.

I think, for a while now and maintain my claim, that the issue with the class is it's mastery. Not just because a general, vague, "it's bad". It is, but for a very good reason - it does not synergise with our toolkit at all. Hardly any other spec in the game has its mastery so disconnected with what the spec actually does. Blizzard want's us to be the stacked healers? FINE. Make our mastery play to that strength then. Right now, it's yielding the least exactly when we are supposed to shine - stacked phases.

Except that it is not true that Shaman were the 2nd highest throughput healers in DS.

http://raidbots.com/dpsbot/Overall_D...#omgwtfkittens

Look at the period between patch 4.3 and 5.0.5. Shaman generally are behind Paladins, Druids and Holy Priests across the board, and flipping back and forth with Disc Priests for last place that entire tier. People remember it as great because it was a lot better than Firelands, and because of how strong Shaman mechanics were for the last 2 bosses. However, the spec actually performed relatively poorly overall for that tier.

[Dra]

Why not keep Ascendance as it is, make Ancestral Awakening our mastery (remove the on-crit part) and keep Deep Waters as a passive for resto shamans capped at like 40%?

^ This!!!!!!

but i think you will need to make our mastery a bit better then that, maybe make it a 2-3 man spread heal?

[Deleted]

Tibee: yes, because hardly anyone bothered to run with TC/UL combo and dropping spirit. I did, so did 2nd resto in my guild and it worked wonders. Madness, we blew the competition out of the water just with the ability to constantly spam and then regain our mana in 4-5 globals. Zon'ozz, Yor'sahj, Warmaster, were all fights where we could do high amounts of healing, close to paladins output, with running that combo. Spine, i dont even have to mention, godlike SLT. We would rock Ultraxion if we could utilise blue buff, without it, we were low there indeed. That's still a high % of the fights we were capable of contesting top spots.

I am with you against the opinion of "godlike shaman tier", it's bollocks. But i liked our spot that tier because we had room to improve and squeeze in additional performance. We also had a fighting chance. In 5.0 onwards, the same 2 paladins i did keep on par with in DS did 30-40% more healing than me and the other resto just went elemental. 5.2 was even worse and 5.3 was just a nail in the coffin.

I don't mind pidgeonholing us into stacked healing, but be consistent about it. Our mastery does nothing for that niche, nor does it for the toolkit. It's the stem of all the resto-related problems.

[Eliot123]

^ This!!!!!!

but i think you will need to make our mastery a bit better then that, maybe make it a 2-3 man spread heal?

Maybe make it heal 2 targets for mastery % of the original heal, with the addition of preferring low-health targets that are the farthest from the primary heal target (to kind of help with spread healing)? :P

Also, on an unrelated note, why (if it is even possible) don't they just make Chain Heal jump up to let's say 30 yards, but heal less depending on the distance? The spirit of the spell would be kept while resto shamans would at least then have -some- kind of spread healing.

I'm off to eat lemon ice cream.

[Dra]

Maybe make it heal 2-3 targets for mastery % of the original heal, with the addition of preferring low-health targets that are the farthest from the primary heal target (to kind of help with spread healing)? :P

exactly ....

[pouca]

Except that it is not true that Shaman were the 2nd highest throughput healers in DS.

To be precise concerning T13 and the various opinions about this tier.
We were the best healers for progression (3/4 shaman for the most difficult world first for example) then at the end of the tier we were not shining as much as before with better equipment.

I was not in a world first kind of guild of course, but more in a realm first kind of guild, but still, shamans were better at the begining of the tier in my experience.

According to my taste, personal experience, general player experience (logs and so on) I always enjoyed and felt like shaman were great healers during the last tier of every expansion when we can reach high haste value.

[Tiberria]

To be precise concerning T13 and the various opinions about this tier.
We were the best healers for progression (3/4 shaman for the most difficult world first for example) then at the end of the tier we were not shining as much as before with better equipment.

I was not in a world first kind of guild of course, but more in a realm first kind of guild, but still, shamans were better at the begining of the tier in my experience.

According to my taste, personal experience, general player experience (logs and so on) I always enjoyed and felt like shaman were great healers during the last tier of every expansion when we can reach high haste value.

The only reason Resto Shaman were stacked on Heroic Spine was because SLT completely broke an important fight mechanic, not because the spec was particularly well designed that tier. Sure, it felt a lot better and Shaman felt a lot stronger, but I would contend this was more because of how awful T11 and T12 were. If Paladins (as an example) were in the spot that Shaman were in in T13, they probably would be complaining about how weak they were that tier (like they feel they are currently weak on live).

[Deleted]

Our mastery should be as it is now, but with the added effect of increasing the range on our heals by the same % amount.

[Shockzilla]

I don’t care about the class being dead last at every facet of healing, as long as I can be affective at healing I will live with that. I feel weak as a resto shaman right now; blizzard has fixes on the horizon which leads me to believe that they also see something that needs to be addressed. I don’t not see where increasing the size of the healing rains AoE will make any difference at all, I think it is a hollow jester at increasing our output. I think cast times need to be decreased by a large margin, and I think like the way mastery works needs to change.

I have 3 requirements the class needs to meet and right now I don’t believe it does.

1. It has to be fun to play, this is a game, I want it to be fun.
The fun factor of resto shamans is getting very low for me. I do not feel strong as a healer right now, I feel like my shaman is missing something.

2. I should feel like I am cheating when I play the game (extension of the fun factor).
When heavy damage comes in I should be able to handle it and it and I should have the impression that I just saved the raid (every player should have this expectation of feeling powerful in their roll). It is very demoralizing for tanks to be able to heal for nearly 1/3 to ½ of the numbers good healers can put out.

3. Blizzard needs to address Imbalances promptly and take corrective action in a timely manner, they need to communicate with the play base (their customers) in a open, honest and professional manner.

Blizzard has a problem with this on several levels with fixing class issues. We go through several months of we are not seeing the issue you are reporting to us for months, please send us your data and Sims. Then we get a few months of we are looking at trying this or that. Then we get the standard, ok we see where there may be room for improving based off what you’re reporting, here are the changes we are going to make, the community shakes their heads in disbelief of the proposed changes, and voices its questions and concerns on it. Blizzard responds with the same old, to fix this properly we would have to rework that class, so instead of doing what they should and fix the class (Shaman mastery for the sake of argument) we are going to do this “insert bad fix here” and that should take care of it. Between the date the suggested fix was published and the date the fix arrives there is much debate between blizz and the community as to what fix will do and how that effects playing that class in general. Patch day gets here and what we were told was going to be applied as a fix does not happen, they go a different way and we have to live with it, all the while we are being pumped full of we still don’t see this as big a problem as being reported because we don’t like using logs as a good place to draw information about class performance, but we are going to make you happy and make a change. Now go forward a year later to where blizz acknowledges that there really was a problem to start with and that they fixed it. This is poor customer service, and gives the appearance of being shady.

[pouca]

The only reason Resto Shaman were stacked on Heroic Spine was because SLT completely broke an important fight mechanic, not because the spec was particularly well designed that tier. Sure, it felt a lot better and Shaman felt a lot stronger, but I would contend this was more because of how awful T11 and T12 were. If Paladins (as an example) were in the spot that Shaman were in in T13, they probably would be complaining about how weak they were that tier (like they feel they are currently weak on live).

SLT made us far above every one else if used perfectly (hps, fake hps), but our superiority on spine was also due to our strong mono target heal with a crit reforge, and a perfect healing rain, the 4pc for a very good CD, on Deatwing our Cds (mana and 4P) were above every one at the begining of the tier. We were also king of the mana

I didn't play T11 and T12 very much and not in HM so I don't comment but I was only reminding T13 was absolutly wonderfull for a resto shaman and the pain of T11 and T12 should'nt apply to T13

[Dra]

the real problem with resto shamans is, that we are an old fashioned spec, it means that the beginning of a patch we are decent, but as the gear gets high all the other absorb healers outshine us, so ATM in TOT we are limited to a certain HPS that we can't pass it unless someone will screw up (for example DRUMUE HC if a few ppl step on the maze for a few seconds my SLT will really shine, if the phase is executed perfectly ill just sit at the bottom of the healing meters )


if blizz will nerf/remove absorbs we will be one of the best healers without a doubt!, but that isn't going to happen so reroll disc