5.4 Resto shaman! What do you think?

[snapfox]

The changes to Resto shamans were obviously for the better. I hope we can all agree? I'm having a blast playing my shaman now. I'm completing with my other healers and don't feel like I'm just being used for my mana tide. I feel like Rushing streams was by far the best talent they've given us. The fact that my HST (549 ilvl) is critting for 110k! It's amazing, I feel really good about my shaman.

Anyways, I want to know what you guys think so far?

[Natrii]

I'm loving it. My fav thing so far is conductivity on fights is useful on. I'm really undergeared compared to all of our healers. but on fight where we stack enough for me to use conductivity I blow our healers out of the water.

[Deleted]

I'm having a blast
My favourite Change was the improvement of Ch and its Glyph. I feel i have a tool for spread fights. Other healers may have better, but this works good enough for me.
On our Stacked fight niche i am definitively dominating the other healers (usually either a disc or a pala).

On the meters i am either on par on spread fights or miels ahead on stacked fights. The years of being underpowered and working your ass off definitivly pay out

[Deleted]

While the balancing changes were necessary for us to compete, they sure did make the spec way less complex and easier to play. =/

[Deleted]

Its nice to be able to compete for once and actually be chosen for a 2 healer fight over a disc priest or a holy paladin for example. It has also prompted me to try and aim for more haste breakpoints to get more ticks on HST primarily, since that totem has become our strongest heal on spread fights with the new talent(even more than it was before) over focusing crit for the output/mana. I don't feel i have any mana problems on the average fight and still able to pull around 100-130k depending on the fight. Also im a 10man healer, so a mana battery healer doesnt really work as well as it does in 25man.

[Mirean]

I find it much better I used to be on par (at best) with our disc priest on stacked fights and behind him on spread fights (25 man), but now, I completely dominate him on stacked (on Norushen last night, I did 300k and he 200k) and I am on par on stacked, sometimes behind, sometimes ahead.
Also, I love the HR change. In 5.3, I couldn't get under 70-80% overheal even Megaera / Ra-den. But now, my average overheal is around 30%. Combined with the fact that HR is buffed by 40%.... you get the idea

[MaugrimEU]

I loved my shaman before 5.4 (wouldn't be playing him otherwise?), but the changes have definitely been welcomed. Love the glyph of chaining. Actually feels chain heal does some good now. Rushing streams is a great talent for spread out fights and that's the area i've noticed the biggest improvement. Winning again on stacked fights feels good

[Deleted]

While the balancing changes were necessary for us to compete, they sure did make the spec way less complex and easier to play. =/

That's what i thought initially, too. I mean, HR being smartheal, stronger HST which is fire and forget, stronger HTT with weaker Ascendance, all of those painted a picture of dumbed down spec.

I am happy to report that this is NOT the case. Healing Rain positioning is as important as ever, so shamans knowing where to drop it, with raid repositionings in mind, will pull ahead.
HST is more important, too. Unless you drop projection, you have to juggle it with other water totems properly in order to maximise its, really high now, output. "Drop on cd and forget" is a sure way to loose some output too, in fights where damage spikes but is very low outside of those. Remember, with Rushing Streams, it's not a single target heal anymore. It used to heal the tank if there was no raid dmg so it was fine, but now it heals two targets (3 with 2p t15) so you want to have it ticking while there's raid dmg going.
And the new chainheal! It's more important than ever to properly chain through riptide's and/or tanks with ES. Those 3 bounces aren't "whatever, some healing but not much anyway", they're HUGE and making sure they happen and on priority targets will make all the difference.

After yesterdays normal clear, i am hopeful. After mediocore results the first week when i was mostly making sure the strategies work, i had time to put some thought into my healing. Results? World 3 on Nazgrim (dropped already, obviously, but still top 10 or something), ranks on Thok and Paragons too. There's LOTS of potential to squeeze performance out of our class now, so don't dismiss it!

Tip for Thok: Glyph of Riptide is SICK for this. After mana cost reduction, you can easily blanket the raid with about 15k spirit. Wait till about 6-7 stacks on stacked phase, pop HTT, start spreading riptide (squeeze in HR, its possible), pop Ascendance and watch it do 3 mil healing, easy, while you keep spamming them riptides.

[Deleted]

Ranjit, you've basically just described everything any good shaman was doing before the patch regardless and tried to make them more emphasized. Those points you've mentioned were always necessary to maximise your performance and didn't dissapear, true.

However we did pretty much lose the ability to use any filler, except for CH, and things like totemic persistence/rushing stream are just great passive talents with little interaction from the player. Just look at the ability to interact with your meta proc this tier vs the previous one. t15: you have to judge how many casts you can get in, decide between HS/GHW/RT/CH; t16: chainheallol (sup sunwell).

Part of it is overscaling of gear, part of it are the new intelligent healing mechanics (accross all classes), but generally I am having way less fun fulfilling my role in a raid these days. Perhaps I am just burned out and need another break from the game though.

[Deleted]

But that's precisely my point. We work just the way we did, nothing's actually simplified. Yes, Chainheal got more dominant, but that's just because it was not fulfilling it's role before. There are still multiple instances of single target heals taking over chainheal as a filler.

[Deleted]

The thing I enjoy the most about the changes is that we finally have some semblance of choice in how we talent and glyph and that we finally have a reason to cast our filler spells. Yes, spamming CH on the only target with RT isn't the most interesting thing in the world, but it's still worlds above having your ST heals sniped so often that your start questioning if you should bother with them in the first place.

We're also really OP at some fights, so that's nice even if those fights barely mattered as far as progression went..

[ganiccus]

We are great on some fights like protectors and norushen, pretty much pushovers even on heroic but on others I think it would be a disservice for your raid to be there. I'm thinking of hard bosses like heroic Malkorok and heroic Blackfuse where there is a lot of movement and spreading around a big room. Even a fight like heroic spoils where dps requirements are tight and you have to cut on healers, there are other classes I would bring before a resto shaman.
That whole vision Blizzard has for us just don't work once you enter in the realm of difficult and challenging boss fights, it just seems impossible to make a very hard boss where the whole raid remains stacked. Yeah they made H Thok but let's be honest, the only reason it's a tough fight to heal is because you can't cast anything that takes more than 2s past a certain point. And you will probably be brought regardless because the raid damage is so stupidly high that top guilds do it with 8 freaking healers.

[Tiberria]

There is an extremely serious bug with Resto Shaman on Malkorok currently, where all ground smart heals are healing pets over healing players with Ancient Miasma, even when players have shields that are not capped. Of course, pets are pretty much immune to damage on that fight, sit at 100% health, and all healing to them is 100% overheal. It is happening with with other smart heals to a lesser extent (i.e. Healing Stream Totem healing itself over players in range). It is also happening to other healers' ground heals like Spinning Crane Kick, Holy Radiance, and Efflo.

However, targeted abilities like Renewing Mists, Uplift and Rejuv are ticking on shields and going for near 0% overheal, while Healing Rain is losing 2/3 of it's potential output. This obviously sucks for everyone with a smart heal that it's affected, but it's especially game breaking for a spec that has 40% of its output tied into a ground heal, output that would be more valuable and low overhealing than ever on that fight.