Why take a shaman for Offheals?

[Deleted]

This idea came to me while I was doing a daily CM on my ret. Let's say you're a raid leader and you're wiping on this boss. This boss is hard. You're standing out of bad stuff and using CD's correctly, but your healers are undergeared or something and it all goes pearshaped. You need some off healing. So you replace one of the DPS with a different class to try and give you that extra edge. This scenario might get more common with the changes to healing in WoD.

So let's say the reason you wipe is because the tanks die. The tanks keep dying to this one ability that stacks up or something, and they can't survive both the deadly ability and the boss's attacks, they just die too quickly. If you were to have a DPS guy help the tanks on this, you wouldn't ever really take a shaman for the off healing. You'd take a ret. The ret can still do his instant 100k+ Flash Of Lights with selfless healer, gets even bigger crits if there are any adds he manages to snipe, has two massive damage reduction abilities with a tiny CD to use on the tank, and a Lay on Hands to instantly get that tank back up to full hp. The ret would be the clear winner.

If there was an ability that bursted the entire raid down with massive, unavoidable AoE (Think Galakras), you wouldn't take a Shaman, you'd take a druid and have them use Natures Vigil (Which is like Ancestral Guidance, but with much better % of damage converted into healing on a class that does more damage to begin with).

And if there was a slow whittling down of everyone due to raidwide damage, Ysera's gift would do that for you.


I really don't know here, in what situation would the offhealing of a Shaman be preferable to the offhealing of the other hybrids? Am I missing something?

[angeleg]

You are not missing anything, Shaman's offhealing is below other classes atm.

[Baium]

AG used to be OP as all hell, now when I use it I struggle to see just my own HP move at all even if i'm not taking any damage. It makes me sad.

[Sleeze]

I removed Healing Stream and AG feels like it adds nothing at all. Surge is the only healing spell that seems to do anything..

[Deleted]

I removed Healing Stream and AG feels like it adds nothing at all. Surge is the only healing spell that seems to do anything..

The only way you see surge doing anything is because it is cast "fast".
For anything else, we are not viable for that. As i noticed doing quests, it takes ALOT of time to heal myself while i see other players cast 2 spells and be full HP again. As enhance i need to cast like 8 heals to be up again from about 10%.

IF you want to do anything good as offheal, you need HST down and AG popped with Healing Surge as hardcast.

[zekta]

And even then, it needs to be an AoE situation for AG to even pump out enough healing to make any sort of difference. There are situations where it's useful, but overall we are severely lacking in that department. I know it's different mechanics and whatnot, but it bugs me to play my ret paladin and get those powerful, free Selfless Healer FoL heals, whereas on my enhancement shaman I have to willingly give up using one of my strongest hitting attacks in exchange for healing myself via Maelstrom procs. Granted, we do on occasion generate stacks of MW very quickly, but there are also times when you are staring at 2 stacks with nothing else to hit and those extra stacks just seem to never come.

It just doesn't add up when you compare us on a case by case basis to other similar classes (does a Paladin ever have to exchange casting Exorcism for a heal? - I'm not that well versed, but does Exorcism hit as hard for them as LB does for us? My paladin is only in the 60s). Couple that with HST being set to an AI level of "functionally retarded" and AG being gutted, and it really

[Deleted]

it bugs me to play my ret paladin and get those powerful, free Selfless Healer FoL heals

How often do those procs happen though? (if it's anything like the druid one then it's only occasional and it's totally out of your control, whereas MW procs are fairly constant and flexible)

IF you want to do anything good as offheal, you need HST down and AG popped with Healing Surge as hardcast.

Don't bother trying to off-heal anymore, unless it's HS on a tank or maybe a healer during 5-mans. (it's about the only thing that'll work now, and even then it's still a shadow of it's former self)

As enhance i need to cast like 8 heals to be up again from about 10%.

That's because you're hard-casting them...which is pointless, as the heal is even weaker without MW procs.

[zekta]

Selfless healer is a talent that gives you a stack of the buff every time you cast Judgment, which reduces the cost and cast time of your next Flash of Light by 35% and increases the heal effect it has on others (by 20% per stack, I believe, for ret). It stacks three times, so it takes the span of three judgments to get an instant heal buffed up 60% on another person.

Like I said, we have the ability to generate MW way faster if we get lucky, so it's just another example of how our over-reliance as a class on the RNG works against us sometimes, even though it can be a fun mechanic.

[Alltat]

Like I said, we have the ability to generate MW way faster if we get lucky, so it's just another example of how our over-reliance as a class on the RNG works against us sometimes, even though it can be a fun mechanic.

Enhancement has been a very RNG-reliant spec since day one of vanilla, though, so hopefully people knew what they were signing up for.