Resto still needs a buff.

[Hursey]

Not sure what all the argument is over really. It's quite clear that the real problem is absorbs. Flat out nerf shields. Not only will that bring absorb healers down but it will bring every other healer up.

That said though, Shields have been a problem since WoLK and very little, if anything has been done to bring them into line

[Clutch]

Just did a pug normal imp for kicks, disc priest 70% of their healing was PWS, it's average hit was 75k. Literally was critting for 60% of people's HP bar's. Did 70% of the priests healing which easily doubled mine and a holy pallys healing. Seems balanced for sure.

[Pur1tas]

Not sure what all the argument is over really. It's quite clear that the real problem is absorbs. Flat out nerf shields. Not only will that bring absorb healers down but it will bring every other healer up.

That said though, Shields have been a problem since WoLK and very little, if anything has been done to bring them into line

As a shaman I have to say in some fights I would not want to loose out on those shields of our Disc(s). They might top the meters but do I really care if we kill the bosses? Nope. Don't nerf other healers buff shamans..... a little just a little.

[Deleted]

Mm. After a few raids to highmaul, overall Resto Shamans are still towards the bottom of the pack. Disc Priests, Resto Druids and Holy Paladins still have the edge. Having one or two fights where we 'shine' (only one really) doesn't really make for a morale building exercise. I'm not sure if 5% across the board is what we need. Frankly, if our mastery is as it is, then we need to stop fighting against it with our no longer smart heals. If that is to be our mastery, then for the love of God have our heals go for the lowest health targets first (HST, Chain Heal, Healing Rain) - that alone would help immensely.

[Migrin]

Chill guys, we'll be fine. I feel that with the right talents we have a really well rounded kit. Its just that some healers are a little overdone at the moment. A flat buff to our healing doesnt help anyone.

[Menubrea]

Mm. After a few raids to highmaul, overall Resto Shamans are still towards the bottom of the pack. Disc Priests, Resto Druids and Holy Paladins still have the edge. Having one or two fights where we 'shine' (only one really) doesn't really make for a morale building exercise. I'm not sure if 5% across the board is what we need. Frankly, if our mastery is as it is, then we need to stop fighting against it with our no longer smart heals. If that is to be our mastery, then for the love of God have our heals go for the lowest health targets first (HST, Chain Heal, Healing Rain) - that alone would help immensely.

That alone would be enough. I can't even begin to describe how stupid it is to have a healer who relies on people getting low to be truly effective not be allowed to benefit from smart heals.

[Deleted]

That alone would be enough. I can't even begin to describe how stupid it is to have a healer who relies on people getting low to be truly effective not be allowed to benefit from smart heals.

Right?! I mean, that mastery design is SCREAMING out 'this is where smart heals would have the perfect synergy!!', but no. Seriously, bring smart heals back and suddenly, we're no longer crippled by the mastery.

[Deleted]

Some of you have very good points. Shamans are very dependable on healer composition - basically Shammies, our mastery, is Anti-synergy with absorbs, especially Disc priests, we are doing worse the more absorbs there are, druids seem to work much better in such environment. Actually I could put quite good numbers in raids where our Disc priest was unavailable, Absorbs are screwing whole healing setup again and there is no hope blizzard will fix that.

Obviously there are more problems. Anti-synergy between riptide-chain heal-mastery ... So we are supposed to cast CH on Riptide target, which will be obviously higher than he should because of HoT AND we can't choose lowest target, which means our mastery will not kick in properly, chain heal perk become mostly overheal etc ... Basically Blizzard want us to be smart when we cast CH, however we have no control of additional jumps, just the first one we cast and we MUST cast it on person which is probably high enough it doesn't need our attention. This is single-handedly the worst shaman mechanic. It's good to have some synergy between our spells, but this thing need to change somehow, i like riptide being something we need to handle smartly, but they need to think of something else.
Like someone else said - removing smart heals from HR, CH and HST was mistake - it makes our mastery weaker again ...
Our talents in most cases are not on par with that of other healers, don't get me started on Elemental blast, which basically is mandatory otherwise you are going oom fast, why can't it be heal ? or instant ? Cloudbours might be good, but it depends on luck a lot of time and to be honest I can't even imagine to try it, because High Tide is so god damn mandatory, CH without it is not enough(and VERY expensive), especially considering first target is a waste like i said before. Our lvl 100 and 90 talents really need some love. And for love of god please remove GCD from unleash life or buff it somehow ...
Glyph of riptide ... Some people love it, some people hate, i am in second group, but i understand why some people like it - it lets prepare better for incoming high damages. I would like something a bit opposite - increase the duration, but leave total amount healed same(so each tick of HoT is lower), it would let us use initial heal effectively(which they want us to do, that's why they increased initial heal of it in first place ?) and still be fairly prepared for high damage phase with riptide on raid.

Well that's my few cents, Shamans are not in worst position ever, but there are still many problems and it seems blizzard do not listen at all ...

[Morkstall]

How do you feel about Cloudburst Totem. I am a fan of CBT. I have macroed it with HST (Glyphed Rushing Streams). I usually dropped HR as we have a lot of melee and then I drop CBT & HST, this combination is usually 12-22% percent of my healing depending upon movement. In really tight places like tectonic (whatever) on the twins I will use HTT, HR along with CBT for some pretty decent numbers. I almost never use CH as I just don't see the numbers there to make it worth the mana cost even glyphed.

With High Tide will your CH still jump to 6 targets if only 2 have riptide?

As we are trying Heroics I am seeing more mana issues so I might be trying out Elemental Blast. But I do like the small buff that UF does provide.

[Forsedar]

How do you feel about Cloudburst Totem. I am a fan of CBT. I have macroed it with HST (Glyphed Rushing Streams). I usually dropped HR as we have a lot of melee and then I drop CBT & HST, this combination is usually 12-22% percent of my healing depending upon movement. In really tight places like tectonic (whatever) on the twins I will use HTT, HR along with CBT for some pretty decent numbers. I almost never use CH as I just don't see the numbers there to make it worth the mana cost even glyphed.

With High Tide will your CH still jump to 6 targets if only 2 have riptide?

As we are trying Heroics I am seeing more mana issues so I might be trying out Elemental Blast. But I do like the small buff that UF does provide.

I prefer CBT over High Tide right now mostly because Chain Heal is just terrible. Working on Mythic progression, I'm using Healing Surge majority of the time (no mana issues, yet). Any attempt to use Chain Heal feels slow and clunky so I definitely won't be using a talent that supports it. I can use CBT and do decent enough healing with it to justify a GCD for it.

As for how I perform within my guild, I don't absolutely dislike where Resto Shamans stand. Percentiles on Warcraft Logs hold almost no authority on our performance because there are way too many variables for healings. What if your best healer dies early on and you have to do more healing? Your percentile will be higher. Back in SoO, farm 10H Siegecrafter - I would do ~40 percentile because there wasn't much to heal. Lost the other healer due to some fluke... 98 percentile.

Just give it some more time and gear. It is known that Shamans in general just scale better the larger secondary stat pool that we have available to us. Not only that, we don't have much of a choice on gear anyways. Do I wish we could go back to BoT in Cata? Of course. You could Healing Rain and just be the best - but lets be real here.

[Deleted]

I prefer CBT over High Tide right now mostly because Chain Heal is just terrible. Working on Mythic progression, I'm using Healing Surge majority of the time (no mana issues, yet). Any attempt to use Chain Heal feels slow and clunky so I definitely won't be using a talent that supports it. I can use CBT and do decent enough healing with it to justify a GCD for it.

Seems like to it's up to personal preference, for me CH is still king for healing, sometimes throwing HW, I rarely use HS. On Twin Ogron mythic i just can't imagine using HS to snipe heal raid when quake or just before/after pulverize, even when we spread for it Chain heal still can jump most of times. I would like to meddle more with CBT, but I just can't pass High Tide.
Kargath on other hand is the only boss i would consider swapping High tide for CBT maybe will try it next week, however there is not really much to heal on this boss anyway If people do everything correctly.

With High Tide will your CH still jump to 6 targets if only 2 have riptide?

It depends, it usually does not i am getting 5 fair amount of time, however it doesn't need to jump additional target still be massive value imo, no diminishing for later jumps is just big. Can't wait for T17 set bonuses.

[Hursey]

One thing people do is get all wrapped up in the math of what is the best HPM/HPS and seem to tend to forget is the fire and forget nature of some of the resto tool kit.

Sure casting a HR on 2-3 people doesn't make sense from the perfect math point of view, but you can drop that, and those 2-3 people are taken care of allowing you to spot heal else were. Not to mention that people can still run into that same HR if needed (assuming no anti-stack mechanic)

Like wise with CH, Yeah you might only hit 3 targets say, but that's still 3 targets that have had healing. This one probably not the best example right now.

Anyhow, just saying that there is still some worth in non-optimal HPM/HPS healing.

[Hydró-UK]

I prefer CBT over High Tide right now mostly because Chain Heal is just terrible. Working on Mythic progression, I'm using Healing Surge majority of the time (no mana issues, yet). Any attempt to use Chain Heal feels slow and clunky so I definitely won't be using a talent that supports it. I can use CBT and do decent enough healing with it to justify a GCD for it.

Chain heal with High Tide is definitely not terrible. You're saying you spot heal 4-6 people with Surge rather than throwing a chain heal? That seems so inefficient spending over 3x the mana for a similar amount healing when you consider other healers would have done their fair share already.

One of the strangest ideas I've seen anyway, considering CBT is outshone by all of our current cooldowns and relies on lucky timing.

[Alltat]

I don't see what's so clunky about Chain Heal. Sure, it's slow, but most of the healing is in the bounces anyway so it's okay if your target gets overhealed. And there's usually at least one good initial target that you can pretty reliably hit, like tanks.

Frankly, if our mastery is as it is, then we need to stop fighting against it with our no longer smart heals. If that is to be our mastery, then for the love of God have our heals go for the lowest health targets first (HST, Chain Heal, Healing Rain) - that alone would help immensely.

Or delete our boring dumb heals like Healing Stream Totem and give that power to things we have control over instead, like Chain Heal, Healing Wave/Surge and the initial heal of Riptide. Shift focus from the stuff that doesn't benefit much from our mastery (totem, rain, Riptide HoT) to the stuff that does, and the spec will be both stronger, have a more well-defined niche and will be more fun to play.

[Clutch]

Is fairly simple, removing smart heals removed the synergy of the resto shaman mastery. Before your heals were smart enough to target lower health members and actively work alongside our mastery, removing smart heals really crippled the shaman mastery. There's 2 methods to fixing the mastery issues:

1. Change our mastery to work similar to other healers mastery(bigger overall heals, % chance to gain free tidal waves, or something along those lines)
2. Re-Implement Smart Heals for Shaman spells

This change alone would more than likely close the gap between us and other healers.

I was just thinking the other day the whole riptide>>CH methodology, they removed UE working alongside HR due to it feeling repetitive and mandatory, however they keep the old RT>>CH process in place(Aren't the basically the same thing side from, RT>>CH needing to be cast more often, logic blizz)? Would removing RT from the global break the class?

[Deleted]

Pretty funny, if you look up healing on warcraft logs.
check HM lfr 95percentile -> Shaman last spot
check HM normal 95percentile -> Shaman last spot
check HM heroic 95percentile -> Shaman last spot
check HM mythic 95percentile -> Shaman last spot
I agree, blizzard did a good job giving every healer a niche to work. fantastic.