So what is the deal with Healing Rain now?

[Sarevokcz]

AS + GHW

wow, and people are dismissing penance because its whole 9s CD and might not be up, yet somehow 90s CD is fine in that regard.

Flash heal does not compare to HS.

Never said it did...

[Mirean]

What do you think about this?

[Floopa]

What do you think about this?

He's pretty much correct. Like he was about Revival's nerf, or Paladin mastery interacting with EF. Call him an idiot if you want but he is 100% right.

[Deleted]

He's pretty much correct. Like he was about Revival's nerf, or Paladin mastery interacting with EF. Call him an idiot if you want but he is 100% right.

I'm relieved this time i don't even consider calling him an idiot.

[Sarevokcz]

He's pretty much correct. Like he was about Revival's nerf, or Paladin mastery interacting with EF. Call him an idiot if you want but he is 100% right.

yea, we will see. I have yet to see GC right about restoshaman for like 2 expansions.

[Deleted]

Like he was right when he said resto shaman's healing feels fine in 5.3 a week before major buff wave on PTR. Or like he said Ele and Enh dps is in a good spot 2 days before a nerfwave on PTR. Oh Floopa. Oh you.

[Keiyra]

Like he was right when he said resto shaman's healing feels fine in 5.3 a week before major buff wave on PTR. Or like he said Ele and Enh dps is in a good spot 2 days before a nerfwave on PTR. Oh Floopa. Oh you.

Some of that can be attributed to him often talking about where things stand on internal builds, which are often 1-2 ptr patches ahead of whats actually on the PTR, which makes his statement seem out of sync.

(That being said, doesn't mean he also hasn't gotten it very wrong in the past either)

[Tiberria]

He's pretty much correct. Like he was about Revival's nerf, or Paladin mastery interacting with EF. Call him an idiot if you want but he is 100% right.

Yes, of course he is always right. Like during the 5.3 PTR when we told him that giving the higher 25 man target cap to Revival/Tranq/DH without doing the same for HTT or giving us compensation elsewhere would create huge problems. In 5.2, we were barely scraping the bottom with Druids; they massively buffed Druids, and buffed 2 specs (Holy Priests/Monks) that were already destroying us. He said "we don't think 25 man Shaman need the buff" and "we think Shaman are fine" repeatedly and they dug their heads in the sand, doing nothing for us in 5.3. The results from 5.3 were just as predicted and as we warned them.

They have missed the mark so badly so often on Resto Shaman tuning that he has next to no credibility at this point. They also don't seem to understand that the package of HR/ELW/AV/Ascendance combined is almost exactly as strong on live as it is in 5.4. Saying that it's "so much stronger" dilutes the credibility factor even further.

[Floopa]

Pretty sure I didn't say he was always right.

[Shockeye]

Personally I don't like that we are being built around Healing Rain and AoE healing in general.
So GC is saying because HR is so strong now, we don't need anything else to be boosted. The problem with that is that HR requires people to stand in the blue circle for the duration of the spell. Yes, it is up to the Shaman to place it intelligently so as to get the best coverage, but we are still dependent on other players staying in it for that strong heal to give us the best returns.

I guess it'd be nice to choose if we want to be a direct heal or AoE heal build, in the same way a Feral Druids can choose DPS or tank builds in one tree. AoE healing is great for 25s but not that hot for 10s.

[Tiberria]

Personally I don't like that we are being built around Healing Rain and AoE healing in general.
So GC is saying because HR is so strong now, we don't need anything else to be boosted. The problem with that is that HR requires people to stand in the blue circle for the duration of the spell. Yes, it is up to the Shaman to place it intelligently so as to get the best coverage, but we are still dependent on other players staying in it for that strong heal to give us the best returns.

I guess it'd be nice to choose if we want to be a direct heal or AoE heal build, in the same way a Feral Druids can choose DPS or tank builds in one tree. AoE healing is great for 25s but not that hot for 10s.

The thing is, no healer is really built around direct heals at this point, because they are not a big enough component of the current raiding/healing environment. Even Paladins are no longer designed as "the tank healer", because there really is no role for a tank healer anymore - not even in a 25 man raid. If they were to give options, it would have to be a spread AoE vs stacked AoE build. I don't even see why they would need to do that anymore given that no other healer really loses anything going from spread to stacked.

[wordup]

Personally I don't like that we are being built around Healing Rain and AoE healing in general.
So GC is saying because HR is so strong now, we don't need anything else to be boosted. The problem with that is that HR requires people to stand in the blue circle for the duration of the spell. Yes, it is up to the Shaman to place it intelligently so as to get the best coverage, but we are still dependent on other players staying in it for that strong heal to give us the best returns.

I guess it'd be nice to choose if we want to be a direct heal or AoE heal build, in the same way a Feral Druids can choose DPS or tank builds in one tree. AoE healing is great for 25s but not that hot for 10s.

Well with the change to Chain Heal, you can see that they have considered options for non stacked periods in a fight, unfortunately glyph of chaining is pretty much mandatory in said situations and it's negative effect is completely unnecessary. Plus really, it should be healing more than it is, not a huge amount, but a little. The thing is everyone is so focused on the healing rain debacle that it's been sort of lost in the noise.

[Keiyra]

I guess it'd be nice to choose if we want to be a direct heal or AoE heal build, in the same way a Feral Druids can choose DPS or tank builds in one tree. AoE healing is great for 25s but not that hot for 10s.

Off topic FYI - Feral druids cannot choose DPS or Tank in 1 one tree - Feral (DPS) and Guardian (Tank) are separate specs and have been since MoP.

As for for choosing direct heal or AoE heal "build" doesn't that come down mostly to spell selection? Perhaps to a lesser extent gearing of crit versus mastery (though dubious on that, since for 10's crit is usually better regardless no?).

For 10's the choice between aoe and direct; besides spell selection is mostly glyph wise (like do you need riptide glyph or chain heal glyph to cover spread aoe, or are direct heals+HR+CH enough) on the bright side both CH, and its glyph are being improved.

[Seriss]

Well with the change to Chain Heal, you can see that they have considered options for non stacked periods in a fight, unfortunately glyph of chaining is pretty much mandatory in said situations and it's negative effect is completely unnecessary. Plus really, it should be healing more than it is, not a huge amount, but a little. The thing is everyone is so focused on the healing rain debacle that it's been sort of lost in the noise.

If the negative aspect of the chain heal glyph was to no longer create stacks of tidal waves, it could move into my third glyph slot forever and ever and join the illustrious company of totemic recall and healing stream totem. With that horrible cd that tends to stop me dead in my healing tracks while I hammer the button because I want to use chain heal twice or three times in a row... it just disrupts the gameplay

I'll use it anyway on some encounters, I guess. Though I already ruled out Immerseus as a fight for that glyph. Not even with the glyph can I make it bounce as people are really really far apart. Or at least it was like that when we played the encounter on PTR. On heroic, the strat might change too... but for normal... nope, chain heal is useless, no matter if glyphed or not.

[Shockeye]

The thing is, no healer is really built around direct heals at this point, because they are not a big enough component of the current raiding/healing environment. Even Paladins are no longer designed as "the tank healer", because there really is no role for a tank healer anymore - not even in a 25 man raid. If they were to give options, it would have to be a spread AoE vs stacked AoE build. I don't even see why they would need to do that anymore given that no other healer really loses anything going from spread to stacked.

That is a complete failure of design in my opinion.
When my logs show AoE heals, HoTs and smart heals above direct heals, that's a problem. How did we get to a point where support mechanisms became dominant and dominant mechanisms became support? Direct heals should not be second-rate to the others. When one of my highest heals, HST, is effectively mana-neutral because of that gimmicky Totemic Recall glyph, I can only shake my head.

- - - Updated - - -

If the negative aspect of the chain heal glyph was to no longer create stacks of tidal waves, it could move into my third glyph slot forever and ever and join the illustrious company of totemic recall and healing stream totem. With that horrible cd that tends to stop me dead in my healing tracks while I hammer the button because I want to use chain heal twice or three times in a row... it just disrupts the gameplay

I agree. Removing TW from CH when glyphed would be a far, far better implementation. The cooldown serves no purpose other than to be irritating to the player. And that cooldown is the reason I'll never use that glyph as it will be too common to forget it's there and be hitting CH in futility because one is not used to the CD.

[Mirean]

And what about this one? It would still have "cooldown" (not exactly, but it would be worth it to delay it)

Your chain heal now has 25y range, but has 30% longer cast time and consumes Tidal Waves instead of generating them.

It would be worth to use riptide on cooldown, because it would boost chain heal to the current state, and it would be weaker in stacked situations, but not by so huge margin like now.
This glyph would most certainly not be viable in stacked aoe, because if you would chain-cast chain heal like you do now, it would have ~2.8sec cast time. But, in spread situations, you could opt to use riptide on cooldown and it would become a pretty powerful tool.

[Seriss]

Your chain heal now has 25y range, but has 30% longer cast time and consumes Tidal Waves instead of generating them.

It would be worth to use riptide on cooldown, because it would boost chain heal to the current state, and it would be weaker in stacked situations, but not by so huge margin like now.

What does it use the Tidal Waves for? It's doubly punishing to use it with such a long cast-time AND losing tidal waves while we're at it. Isn't it enough to lose tidal waves already? Why additionally slap a curse of tongues on us when using that spell?

Also: we already use riptide on CD... so... eh... I don't know what you're getting at with that sentence O_o

[Mirean]

Well, I think it would be better than the current 2sec cooldown chain heal....a better possibility to heal in spread out situations

also, as I said, in spread situations, you would most likely do riptide + 2 chain heals rotation, which is much better than chain heal + riptide + <totem, UE+HR, or whatever> + chain heal. 2 consecutive chain heals with 25y jump range would be huge to our healing in spread.

[marklar]

wow, and people are dismissing penance because its whole 9s CD and might not be up, yet somehow 90s CD is fine in that regard.

if you read the post i replied to and played a shaman, you would know that the situation he was talking about is pretty rare. penance is good IF it's off cooldown. now, i haven't played my priest since ICC; is penance typically used on cooldown, or is it more likely to be available when needed for an emergency heal?

Never said it did...

someone said this: "PW:S + flash is gonna be more output than RT+HS". however, that's not a valid comparison since a shaman can do HS > HS/riptide in 2 GCD, which means the flash heal is compared to the second HS+riptide (which occupy 1 GCD), not just the riptide.

[Deleted]

They're too afraid that without CD, we chain cast CH. Which i think, is really the case. After buffing CH without Ranged Limitation, i would do so in many situations.