Legion Restoration Shaman Alpha Discussion

[Deleted]

I find it funny they had the time to do the idle animation but not to fix stuff that aren't working properly. Maybe its a sign we'll be idling a lot and need a special animation for it

[Shockeye]

I find it funny they had the time to do the idle animation but not to fix stuff that aren't working properly. Maybe its a sign we'll be idling a lot and need a special animation for it

Different teams working on different game elements is all

[escapez]

Can someone explain the new "Gift of the Queen" pls.

[Isheria]

Old Gift of the Queen: Consumes healing rain and deal healing to all targets inside it and resetting your healing rain cd.
New Gift of the Queen: Not tied to healing rain at all, now a targettable aoe heal on the ground with a 12y radius that heals 6 targets within the area for 500% sp and has a 45 sec cd.

New Gift of the Queen is basically Holy Word: Sanctify with a slightly bigger radius 12y instead of 10y and a cast time instead of instant.

[Shockeye]

Old Gift of the Queen: Consumes healing rain and deal healing to all targets inside it and resetting your healing rain cd.
New Gift of the Queen: Not tied to healing rain at all, now a targettable aoe heal on the ground with a 12y radius that heals 6 targets within the area for 500% sp and has a 45 sec cd.

New Gift of the Queen is basically Holy Word: Sanctify with a slightly bigger radius 12y instead of 10y and a cast time instead of instant.

So we now have two spells that need to be physically positioned and placed. Healing Rain was bad enough. I liked the concept of Gift before, it worked with an existing spell and fit the class concept. The new version is just another bloody button to push.

[Deleted]

Which is fun! And mb not useless in PvP

[Gardiff]

This is a change for the better. I was all up for the old one but only from a raiding perspective. It was completely not viable for 5 mans or PvP. This new version makes it viable. While an argument could be made that the old version had a skill component to it (i.e. popping it at the end of a HR etc), it also had an equally annoying aspect to it as well. Personally, I don't mind the reticule system for it. It doesn't serve the same role as HR and you have to remember that.

HR is a 10 second duration spell that you generally place on the melee.
This is a spell which has its healing all within the cast, and doesn't have to hit the melee etc. It is also free. It probably will get nerfed in terms of its SP coefficient as it was recently buffed to 500% (was 400% before). If there isn't a big burst every 1.5 minutes, you may want to use this spell just to hit a few people. That type of scenario has existed on some fights thus far. You don't do this with HR, however.

A 500% 6 target cap, mana free (though all artifact spells are mana free), up-front heal is something that we could definitely use. It just feels so much less clunky to use than the old version (specifically in 5 mans or small group content and even some raid bosses). The old version was annoying especially since you basically wanted a WA to track HR duration (which you can't do on alpha) so that you could consume it at the optimum time. What was happening on alpha, however, was that people were sometimes just dropping a HR and then consuming it immediately which IMO is an example of a badly designed spell. But with it now being unlinked to HR, it fixes pretty much every issue.

edit since its no longer unlimited cap but 6 targets. Thus, it probably won't need a nerf in the sp%

[chandy]

The best thing about the new gift of the queen is that, there is a smaller chance of it getting nerfed. With the change to the druid tier 19 4 piece and the consequent nerf to its interaction with their artifact on use effect, the new gift is still probably one of the strongest. I am not sure about the new one point trait...although it is a PVE upgrade, it seems wasted for those who decide to go for a ST/HW/HS build.

I was hoping for a less niche trait since the other 2 are still very niche. Here is to hoping we see more changes.

Oh and Gardiff I take it now that you can get to 110, we will see tidal pools in action next raid test? <3

[Gardiff]

Well actually I am level 110 but it doesn't actually do anything.

About 2 patches ago blizzard nerfed all artifact gains. So it is basically impossible to reach a 2nd gold artifact. Before the change 2 patches ago, the max number of artifacts you could get was 10. This is equivalent to getting 1 gold artifact. However, if you saved up your artifact points before the changes 2 patches ago (when the artifact gains were about 5-10x as much), you could sneak in a few extra artifacts points after the patch hit. Thus, currently I am able to get about ~15-16 artifact talent points (about mid-way to a second gold artifact).

Some people saved up EVEN more and actually have gone past the 2nd gold artifact into the third but you cannot do this anymore. Unfortunately I would need another 4 artifact points to get tidal totems so I cannot test it. I would prefer not to start another shaman for it since 16 artifacts is pretty massive and I also have pretty solid relics placed in it. Even more so I don't think starting a fresh toon would solve the problem since even with fresh toons now, I don't think people are getting past ~3-4 points. It is pretty lame but not much we can do.

I am sure they will increase the artifact gains here in a bit and I will try out tidal totems then. I don't actually think it will be as strong as people anticipate. But the artifacts leading up to it are all amazing and so that is the primary reason to go for it. The HTT one isn't bad but you have to take 3 points into a subpar artifact and then pick up a CH artifact which isn't that great. However, HTT in a 30 man setting is doing quite a bit. It doesn't do as much in a 20 man setting, but I could still see that HTT artifact being a potential choice after actually doing the raid testing. Again, however, the path to tidal totems / decree are riddled with really good choices (at least in comparison to basic damage reduction) and so that is the primary problem I am having with that one.

The new artifact on CH and crit chances is not that great. Just take a best case scenario. 20% crit + high tide. On average, you will see 1 resurgence proc per chain heal crit. Resurgence returns 0.25% mana per CH crit. Previous to the artifact, it would return (in this scenario), just 0.25% mana per CH crit. With this artifact, it becomes 0.375%. This isn't really anything too great. CH really only returns mana if you spec BD but this artifact, by the way it is worded, would not affect the BD resurgence procs. Thus, it is very miniscule.

I mean if you cast 40 chain heals (which would basically be insane right now), you might see 5% additional mana. This is equivalent to 1 additional chain heal. Its hardly anything to write home with.

I really do like the new gift of the queen though. I wanted to use the spell in more scenarios and this will at least help with that.

[Staryu]

I think I like the new Gift. Although I did like the aspect of the "Mushroom:Bloom" thing it had going on before, I think the new version gives you more control. HR on the melee, and now the range can get an AOE heal off on them too! Where as before, itd be melee getting the HR AND the gift.

[Gardiff]

As expected, tidal totems is a bit underwhelming. This is only from my own experience but I made a longer post on the main forums.

This raid test all classes gained access to their entire artifact tree. Thus, I got to test out tidal totems.

Here is the aggregate set of logs from 10 pulls:

https://www.warcraftlogs.com/reports...ss=-2&source=9

The encounter is nice in that the burst comes every 30-35 seconds. Thus, CBT/WS allow for incredible efficiency. I never went below 50% mana in almost every pull. Or if I did, it was me at the end of an encounter just spamming in the event we weren't intentionally wiping. I really liked this encounter as it accentuated one of the niches this expansion kinda pushed us into with timed CDs. The fact that wellspring now works with mastery makes it appealing again.

But I felt tidal totems was pretty underwhelming. Again, if other shaman got it to work better, would greatly appreciate it. I had issues with EST on this encounter as well but that was probably because of the encounter itself and me not using it at the right time.

Just wanted to add nythendra logs as well. This is the ideal circumstance where tidal totems should shine but it is not doing as well. This is kinda what we were talking about before.

https://www.warcraftlogs.com/reports...es=1&source=33

[chandy]

Tidal pools does seem bad on the spread fights. With the stacked fight, though is it really that bad considering queen's is doing 100% more healing than it should? Unless something changed.

Is it just me or is earthen shield totem pretty awesome? Our talent tree is really really well done this expansion well I still hate the level 15 tier but I think it really delivers overall.

[Gardiff]

I mean the point is that tidal pools had its best chance on any raid fight thus far (11 tested) on nythendra and it was sitting around 5%. That fight consists of the group stacking up 100% of the time in phase 1 and it is constant AoE damage. Its a scenario where tidal totems should shine but it really doesn't. I'd imagine on spread fights it's not going to be worth it at all.

You're right queen is doing twice the healing. BUT, there are things to consider.

1) Wavecrash is bugged - This will inherently buff both HST and Decree by 30% (or more if you spend the relics on it) which is massive. Even in these logs, my HST/decree comprises 15% of my healing and I am not going EotE. When you consider EotE (I was stalling HSTs on today's fights as the big bursts on ursoc would happen at every ~35-40 seconds and so it wasn't a good idea to use HST on cd) and the 4 piece, HST + Decree can easily still be 20-25% of our healing.
2) Queen does not benefit from mastery, haste, or crit. The haste one may be intended but I cannot imagine the mastery or crit one is. This one is huge.
3) The above two basically can mostly compensate for the fact that it is doing 2x the healing. Also have to consider that right now, decree overheals a ton. This overheal will automatically be less when the correct spellpower is attached to the spell. Of course, with it scaling with secondaries, the problem comes up again so who knows.

EST is good but it depends completely on the fight. I thought it would be great on ursoc but the damage there comes in big bursts and so almost all of the totem gets wasted as it has a damage cap per person. As in, it absorbs something like 2.5 million (your health bar) but can only absorb your spellpower per person (like 30k) per tick. Thus, on ursoc there typically is only huge bursts every 30 seconds and there are 2 distinct groups. This totem really doesn't do well on a fight like this. EST is going to shine on fights where there is stacked, constant healing. That is why on Nythendra it shines - The entire encounter is full stack mode (outside of a short P2) and continual ticking damage on the raid - This makes your EST immediately get consumed within ~5-10 seconds. This is definitely not true for most of the other fights, however. I can post other logs if you want on other fights and EST isn't exactly amazing in them. But it serves a role.

I still the think the problem with tier 15 will be once the above bugs are fixed and we get our 4 piece, RS with Decree will pull massively ahead of the two talents on the tier. Torrent is absolutely not a bad talent as it lets us still get some added bonus to a very useful spell even though from a numbers perspective, it will be weaker than RS when all buffs and bugs are considered.

Undulation can probably be tracked by weak auras but the thing with it is that it is so annoying. We don't normally ever bank our HWs/HSs - we just kind of cast them continually since they are very common spells to cast. This is true in 5 mans or raids. HW especially is just a spell that we use in between periods of high damage. Why would I ever want every third heal specifically to be stronger? It might not be a problem if the numbers on it were stronger but even from a numbers perspective, it would at best buff our HW/HS on average by 16.67%. This is not as strong as RS. And it doesn't provide as reliable healing as torrent which fills a separate niche.

[chandy]

there is also the small detail that healing stream totem is not available at level 15 last i checked. I think undulation would be neat if it were a separate spell that is usable after casting HW/HS or lightning bolt a couple of times it would be even better if we could use that spell to do dmg while leveling

This eliminates sitting on the buff when you need to use HW but are anticipating a big hit as well. One can only dream since the fact of the matter is, although tier 15 is really boring it is actually effective as is.

Btw was sense of urgency as annoying to maximize as predicted?

[Gardiff]

Ah yeah that is true as well about HST and RS.

Sense of Urgency was meaningless for me since we lusted at the start for both fights. I suppose I could have hidden away 100 yards somewhere to miss the initial lust but with it just being a 25% buff now, I didn't think too much about it. It might be worth doing on live. Still, it is pretty silly that it works this way. Not much we can do.

[Dra]

is it just me or our tank healing feels like crap? WTB unleash, earth shield and 2 stacks of tidal waves back

[chandy]

So unleash life is back.....I guess the question is does it affect wellspring or gift of the queen? If it doesn't, I just don't see how this will compete with undulation or torrent :/

I also really hope with the removal of Rushing streams they leave decree at 150% SP

[Gardiff]

UL does not work with WS/Gift. It is the same as it is in WoD except for a minor increase in healing and no movement boost anymore. It is a very poor talent. Undulation is way better than it which is still worse than torrent.

I think we'll be fine even if decree goes to 75% if its scaling issues are fixed.

RS had to go though IMO. Just wish UL wasn't added back as it is a very poor spell on live with only very niche uses.

[Skillz]

I really dont understand the resto design goal, it keeps getting worse. Taking away the sort of rotation we could have with riptide - 2x healing wave, repeat. Was so great early on to keep mana under control. Chain heal - 2x healing wave was also a good round.

They went with riptide and chain heal to only give 2 charges off tidal pols with the crashing waves talent. And now even that is gone... Really, what was so damn op about riptide giving 2 stacks?

If this is going forward, they better open up for tidal waves to stack up to atleast 4, so we can plan some ahead when some spot healing is needed. Or maybe they want us to cast lightning bolts instead of heals when spot healing is needed and riptide is on cd.

[Gardiff]

Yep the CW nerfs are a real shame. It wasn't the go-to talent on that tier - plenty of competition with AG depending on your playstyle. I understand they probably did it because of HS but this greatly hurts how we play efficiently because of how it affects HW.

Baseline we really don't have too many efficient spells

They include HW/riptide/HST/HR (if it hits 6)/ Gift

Inefficient spells are CH/HS and wellspring if you use it poorly (and if you spec it)

The thing is, riptide, HST, HR, Gift are all CD spells. HW is the spell we spam mostly when there isn't stuff going on. With these changes, it will be incredibly awkward having to use the 2.5 second HWs as filler when we are playing efficient. And the thing is, without CW, tidal waves by itself isn't very good.

On live, baseline we have riptide on a 5 second CD with TW granting 2 charges of 20%/30%.

On legion, baseline we have riptide on a 6 second CD with TW granting 1 charge of 20%/30%. It can be spec'd and 3 artifact talent points to be 1 charge of 45%/58%.

I would 100% prefer the WoD version because everything flows naturally with a 5 second CD and 2 charges even if its weaker per charge. There are some awkward pauses on alpha right now because of this change.

Granted you can still heal dungeons just fine. I am just saying how it feels with using HW right now as filler. It just doesn't feel that good. I used HW pretty regularly in alpha raids before. I don't know if I will use it as much now.