Healing Mastery Weakened in SoO?

[Blithe]

So what your saying is when it matters our mastery is good, and when no one cares what happens its poor, expect for ranking and flexing your epeen

I'm cool with this

No. I'm saying our Mastery is nigh useless because a target is either sniped (making our Mastery useless), or topped off (making our Mastery weaker) while Druids' heal over time abilities are increased which continually stays useful, Holy Priests' mastery places a heal over time on the target and Discipline and Holy Paladins' create absorption effects. Mistweaver Monks are in the same boat as us, but I'd argue theirs is much worse.

Our Mastery only takes in effect when the target is lower than 60%... all of the other Mastery's are in effect ALL the time.

[kenn9530]

No. I'm saying our Mastery is nigh useless because a target is either sniped (making our Mastery useless), or topped off (making our Mastery weaker) while Druids' heal over time abilities are increased which continually stays useful, Holy Priests' mastery places a heal over time on the target and Discipline and Holy Paladins' create absorption effects. Mistweaver Monks are in the same boat as us, but I'd argue theirs is much worse.

Our Mastery only takes in effect when the target is lower than 60%... all of the other Mastery's are in effect ALL the time.

mastery is fine tbh shammy healing is currently very strong now so you shouldn't really be complaining, in heroic content shammies are in the top 10 for ranks on every boss so the mastery is not exactly useless as it gets a fair amount of use and even not being active 100% of the time it doesn't effect healing output in the slightest.

You could say holy priest mastery is almost useless as most of its healing just goes to overhealing.

[Hursey]

Our Mastery only takes in effect when the target is lower than 60%... all of the other Mastery's are in effect ALL the time.

Are you sure about that number? I admit I haven't looked too hard for a long time, but doesn't mastery start taking effect as soon as you aren't at full health?
Wasn't at around 60% that mastery became more efficient than crit?

[Tiberria]

Are you sure about that number? I admit I haven't looked too hard for a long time, but doesn't mastery start taking effect as soon as you aren't at full health?
Wasn't at around 60% that mastery became more efficient than crit?

Yes - mastery increases your throughput as soon as the target drops below 100% HP. The 60% thing that is being quoted refers to the HP% breakpoint where 1 point of Mastery starts to be more throughput than 1 point of Crit. That breakpoint is ~65% for AoE healing and ~43% for single target healing. The reason why single target has a lower breakpoint is because of AA and the interaction between Crit and AA.

[Zaxvriin]

The changes really can't possibly make our mastery in a worse spot than it has been for most of this expansion (i.e. in most cases 1/3 to 1/8 of the value of other secondary stats). It's too hard to tell right now, but it's going to depend on how they implement the changes and whether they are successful in actually getting healing/health pools to a place where people really stay sub-100% HP for extended periods of time. They attempted to do exactly the same thing during Cata, but even during T11 in 25 man raids, you rarely had people not topped for sustained periods. If it really sticks this time, the value of our mastery has nowhere to go but up.

I'm so glad I'm not the only one who remembered that being the case and crying on the inside when people talk about triage healing occuring in Cataclysm...

[dean771]

Even during progression it is rare that people will actually stay at a low hp, especially in Siege it .

They don't need to stay low. they go low, get hit by heavy mastery effected heals and get topped up. The heals that aren't mastery effected don't matter anyway

[maizensh]

Maybe progression, but in a world where your heals are sniped by Priests and Paladins (in addition to their Mastery) it feels quite useless. Our Mastery's the second worst as a healer, next to Monks simply because it 99% of the time ends in overhealing.

I've wanted a rework of it since it made its debut, it makes PvP hard to balance around and it inevitably makes Raiding useless for us (due to overhealing). If our Mastery turned overhealing into a heal over time, or something, I'd be pretty happy.

"Increases the potency of your healing spells by up to 24%, based on the current health level of your target (lower health targets are healed for more), and causes 24% of any overhealing done to heal the target instead over 6 sec."

It's a good idea but a little OP, because in pve healing rain will become just ridiculous, and crit will probably become a dead stat outside of resurgence needs.

What I would want is that any extra overheal only from mastery will go into an absorb (or less ideally into a hot). This way overhealing a topped off (or nearly topped off) player doesn't grant him this massive absorb/hot, and in the meanwhile crit doesn't loose its value for healing as well.

Basically rephrasing:
"Increases the potency of your healing spells by up to 24%, based on the current health level of your target (lower health targets are healed for more), and up to 24% of any overhealing done becomes an absorb for the next 6 seconds."

[Duglawaha]

It's a good idea but a little OP, because in pve healing rain will become just ridiculous, and crit will probably become a dead stat outside of resurgence needs.

What I would want is that any extra overheal only from mastery will go into an absorb (or less ideally into a hot). This way overhealing a topped off (or nearly topped off) player doesn't grant him this massive absorb/hot, and in the meanwhile crit doesn't loose its value for healing as well.

Basically rephrasing:
"Increases the potency of your healing spells by up to 24%, based on the current health level of your target (lower health targets are healed for more), and up to 24% of any overhealing done becomes an absorb for the next 6 seconds."

This game needs less absorbs, not more.

[maizensh]

This game needs less absorbs, not more.

Keep in mind that absorbs in WoD will be much less powerful than they're now. But even if not an absorb, the hot version of this mastery will work too.
It might have ramifications on condensation totem, which will make hots on topped target very op. Absorb is actually the "nerfed" variant.

[Taalyn]

No. I'm saying our Mastery is nigh useless because a target is either sniped (making our Mastery useless), or topped off (making our Mastery weaker) while Druids' heal over time abilities are increased which continually stays useful, Holy Priests' mastery places a heal over time on the target and Discipline and Holy Paladins' create absorption effects. Mistweaver Monks are in the same boat as us, but I'd argue theirs is much worse.

Our Mastery only takes in effect when the target is lower than 60%... all of the other Mastery's are in effect ALL the time.

Coordinate healing better.

[shamantime]

Keep in mind that absorbs in WoD will be much less powerful than they're now. But even if not an absorb, the hot version of this mastery will work too.
It might have ramifications on condensation totem, which will make hots on topped target very op. Absorb is actually the "nerfed" variant.

I would take the hot over the absorb. Absorbing-esque abilites don't fit well with Resto's toolkit or theme. As for Condensation totem, I hope they replace it or rework it because spending a minute trying to get a boost for a healing spell doesn't seem worth it for the outcome.

[maizensh]

Oh, but you don't spend a minute. The totem is active for a minute and the effect is dynamic and additive. Stoove did a nice write up on this topic on http://stoove.wordpress.com/2014/01/04/condensation101/. Though he missed one point, which is how hots will play with this totem.

Of course SP coefficients are going to be tuned so that the bonus will converge to a finite number, but I suspect that hots will have a pivotal role in quick ramping up of the totem since spamming CH probably won't be possible (due to back to triage healing and stuff).

[Deleted]

Its useless for topping meters, for actualy completeing hard encounters during progression its quite good

Not this again.... So many shamans has no clue how to reforge sadly.

In todays raiding it's either be 90%+ or get oneshoted. Mastery is the worst stat unless the raid constantly is below 66%~ hp. You need to keep people above 90% or you already failed as a healer today.

[Ellesarr]

Currently useless in PvE.

painfully clueless

[Axelond]

Even if mastery is far obsolete right now (according to RSS mastery is about 1/2 of what crit or haste is and RSS has inflated mastery calculations last time I checked) are shamans in a good place balance wise so blizzard buffing our mastery is very unlikely.

[Tiberria]

Even if mastery is far obsolete right now (according to RSS mastery is about 1/2 of what crit or haste is and RSS has inflated mastery calculations last time I checked) are shamans in a good place balance wise so blizzard buffing our mastery is very unlikely.

In 5.4, no, but they don't really care about 5.4 healer balance at this point and haven't for several months now. In WoD, everything will change, and there is plenty of room to rework the numerical value of mastery around the changes to other spells. The spot healers are in right now balance wise has little to no relevance on what happens in 6.0.