Resto - 6.0 latest patch notes discussion

[daehin]

Moreover healing rain now heals only 6 people which makes it easier to cap it by throwing it at melee without much thinking.

since 5.3 -.-

Problem is that as HR smart heal is removed now in live is like it heals 6 most injured people and in beta and wod it will be just 6 people standing on it, so pretty useless

[Vraull]

I have to take back what I said earlier about shamans, since after dropping down from size 30 to 20 man for mythic tests, I noticed how shit we actually are for raiding at the moment. Couldn't catch others even with a perfect pot HTT at Oregorger. We are at least 20% behind priests and monks, and even more behind compared to paladins, from what I experienced tonight. Waiting for a solid tuning patch.

we were missing all of our purification passives for testing today, so shaman was really shit

[maizensh]

That's not true, resto shaman toolkit has never been this powerful for spread healing. The removal of chaining penalty and addition of high tide made this class playable again for me, even though the numbers are low. But remember that this was due to the accidental removal of purification buffs (which are huge).

Moreover healing rain now heals only 6 people which makes it easier to cap it by throwing it at melee without much thinking.

Not being able to control who the heals go to hampers the spec's some spread healing capabilities that are still present on live.
CH is a random heal (except for the initial target), HR is a random heal, HST is a random heal. All this randomness works against spread healing and against resto's mastery (which Blizzard tries so hard to force). And even though CH can theoretically produce big numbers, you have little control over who they go to.

Size of heal is random = can be fun (like on live).
Size of heal is random, target is random, effect from mastery is random = isn't fun. Just too much randomness for a healer.
Heck, even dps specs who heavily rely on crit don't have so much randomness in them.

[Deleted]

Size of heal is random = can be fun (like on live).
Size of heal is random, target is random, effect from mastery is random = isn't fun. Just too much randomness for a healer.
Heck, even dps specs who heavily rely on crit don't have so much randomness in them.

I agree, randomness is terrible for a healer. Which is exactly why i like the new CH changes. Consider the same situation on live and beta: you've got 3 riptides rolling on a random person and tanks, 15 m flex environment. You cast a chain heal on somebody with 15 % health.

Live: the guy gets +30k, the chain fails to jump further
Beta: Chain heal jumps 6-7 times throughout the entire raid and to riptide targets.

If there is a chance the chain heal will fail it equals to randomness.

I agree also that i might've chosen bad words to say that we're "powerful" right now because we're certainly not and still have our issues that have lasted for a long time.

[SH4D0WS1N]

Just finished some attempts at beastlord darmac mythic with a healer lineup of 2 x druid 1 x paladin 1 x restoration (myself)

this is how skada looked after ~15 attempts

Healing tide cut for some reason -> Healing Tide 22 M (21.8 %)


"We're currently not benefiting from +25% to healing, +50% to water totem healing, +100% to HR."
A rather minor buff. made me crack up

Assuming none of those buffs contribute to overhealing (which is not the case, but still) you would have healed for 157.35625 M total, which would put you inbetween the rdruids. However, it does make us even more of a fucking HTT battery since it will be doing closer to 25% (according to your skada) of our throughput with the buff.



Personally I haven't bothered testing mythic (where our performance should theoretically be better). Atm we're a mechanical nightmare, and even with good throughput I probably won't play an rsham. I'm doing the same for fury warriors as well. If I feel like healing it will probably be a hpriest because rshams were always too simple to me and if stance dancing will be a throughput increase I'll enjoy the higher skill cap. Otherwise I think I'm rolling a rogue, I haven't figured it out yet.

[shammypie]

Assuming none of those buffs contribute to overhealing (which is not the case, but still) you would have healed for 157.35625 M total, which would put you inbetween the rdruids. However, it does make us even more of a bad word HTT battery since it will be doing closer to 25% (according to your skada) of our throughput with the buff.



Personally I haven't bothered testing mythic (where our performance should theoretically be better). Atm we're a mechanical nightmare, and even with good throughput I probably won't play an rsham. I'm doing the same for fury warriors as well. If I feel like healing it will probably be a hpriest because rshams were always too simple to me and if stance dancing will be a throughput increase I'll enjoy the higher skill cap. Otherwise I think I'm rolling a rogue, I haven't figured it out yet.

If you were going for a high skill cap you wouldn't have chosen rshaman to begin with and should have gone monk/priest route. I am not sure why the switch from rshaman to dps warrior/rogue but to each their own.

On the subject of this skada report puhrin i saw that you said you were using RT and Primals. From what i have seem most have been going the conductivity/ele blast route for endless mana. Is the encounter in question not much longer than 3 mins (your oom time)? Is it just this encounter/testing cycle that healing is similar to live? Furthermore did you try other builds or just the 1?

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I cant get why such a big company cant effort to hire one guy per spec (even a class would do I guess) that would be here for us, for our concerns and ideas, to respond to us, and insted put all the weight on one guy (I know Celestalon keeps insisting its them not him but meh)
Fun is the only thing that makes us keep playing and still make us subscribe. Just one guy per spec/class that would be able to sit down with us (them clever guys!) to the round table would earn so much money for Bliz.

For me its about fun/mechanics and balance. It seems he/they think numbers will shut us up but if the first is missing I dont feel good about myself playing resto. I was thinking about switching main but every time I come to that decision I reliase I dont want to drop char I have played for such long time. From that point of view its better not to play at all then cling to the hopes of the better future considering the fact devs dont even recognise our issues. :-(

because the classes and specs don't need constant tuning everyday. A small handleful of people work much better than the 99? people you are suggesting.

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They haven't successfully done that for like 3 expansions now, and Shaman throughput balance is particularly problematic because of the "stacked healing niche". On fights that don't work well with the niche in the past, MTT and Ancestral Vigor and Stormlash still kept Resto Shaman viable for a raid spot. With all of that gone for WoD, they will just be useless on fights that don't cater to that niche.

to be honest those were more bandaids than a real solution to the problem. Sometimes you need to remove the training wheels before you can really begin to ride

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How is this a buff to chain heal?
High Tides is prety much already a cookie cutter. And going with High tide already removes that decrease per jump.
this does nothing, other than decreasing the value of high tides, which will still come out as the top spec for resto.

Napkin math. Its about a 7.3% increase to Chain Heal with no perk and no talent and a 6% increase to chain heal with the perk.

[SH4D0WS1N]

If you were going for a high skill cap you wouldn't have chosen rshaman to begin with and should have gone monk/priest route. I am not sure why the switch from rshaman to dps warrior/rogue but to each their own.

On the subject of this skada report puhrin i saw that you said you were using RT and Primals. From what i have seem most have been going the conductivity/ele blast route for endless mana. Is the encounter in question not much longer than 3 mins (your oom time)? Is it just this encounter/testing cycle that healing is similar to live? Furthermore did you try other builds or just the 1?

I only stuck with my rsham because it was the most geared and was topping meters. I actually prefer my rdruid and disc over my rsham, I've just spent the most with rsham. Plus the feeling of lost cds going to either class is quite large. I feel useless during a HTT moment when I'm on my disc because all I have is my 90 talent and I can't do any more throughput outside of that. I also have Spirit Link and then neither of my throughput CDs need to be channeled and Ascendance isn't even a set and forget, I actually have to heal with it, whereas for hpriest and rdruid I have to channel tranq/Divinehymn. Rsham just felt like a jack of all trades, like I had a tool for every scenario (except for tank healing). Now in WoD it's looking to be a clunky RNG based healer.

I only really played rsham in SoO, but how exactly did you guys do before smart healing was the goto thing? My entire rsham experience makes me believe that the way we are currently set up in MoP and the way we're still set up in WoD (which is why we aren't working right now) is smart healing. Healing Rain (as of 5.4)? Smart heal. Chain Heal? Smart heal. HST? Smart heal. HTT? Smart heal. The only IJ log I have that isn't expired (I'm missing a lot of the times I've gone resto since I went enhance after I finished progression and a few of the times I've swapped to resto for a fight weren't logged) shows those four heals as 68.3% of our healing done. The healing meta has shifted so that supposedly overhealing should be less of a thing and bad RNG shouldn't happen very often, but it does put us at the mercy of RNG with little to no control over it.

We won't be the only one with this issue. Mushroom and Wild Growth for rdruids can do this (though isn't Wild Growth a location based spread not an injured one anyway?). Circle of Healing for holy priests and I guess their AoE stance ability can sort of do it. Hpallies Light of Dawn can do it. Monks have had this problem even with smart healing in SoO at least. However, it affects a much greater portion of our healing than it does other classes. A lot more of our healing is random targets than it is for any other class. They can try and shift it all to the most control we have over our healing (Riptide and Chain Heal) but I keep hearing about how Blizz (and some select players in here) don't want a Chain Heal spam which is the best way to counter this RNGsham without changing mechanics of some abilities entirely (which I wouldn't disagree with).

Am I wrong? Am I blowing this out of proportion? I am pretty upset at a lot of the changes in WoD (especially to my by far favorite fury warrior) so I may just be talking through that annoyed side.

[Wobblytuna]

Simple fixes:

Give AV back. It wasn't a god damn button and it was the only unique aspect of our class that remained. Why remove it if it's not bloat?

Give us Mana Tide Totem/buff resurgence back and get rid of Elemental Blast for Resto. I don't want to be a robot and cast EB every CD just for the regen. The talent as ELEMENTAL in it... I'm a Resto Shaman, please. We are a shaman class, why take away a totem.

Buff Healing Rain. Larger radius, instant cast. Like a druid's mushroom.

Buff Cloudburst. I like it. I really really hate High Tide gameplay. Storm Elemental Totem will never see the light of day as it is as well.

Buff HST. Conductivity is nice and all... If encounters were friendly to stacked healing. If they aren't we are complete poop.

[shammypie]

I only stuck with my rsham because it was the most geared and was topping meters. I actually prefer my rdruid and disc over my rsham, I've just spent the most with rsham. Plus the feeling of lost cds going to either class is quite large. I feel useless during a HTT moment when I'm on my disc because all I have is my 90 talent and I can't do any more throughput outside of that. I also have Spirit Link and then neither of my throughput CDs need to be channeled and Ascendance isn't even a set and forget, I actually have to heal with it, whereas for hpriest and rdruid I have to channel tranq/Divinehymn. Rsham just felt like a jack of all trades, like I had a tool for every scenario (except for tank healing). Now in WoD it's looking to be a clunky RNG based healer.

I only really played rsham in SoO, but how exactly did you guys do before smart healing was the goto thing? My entire rsham experience makes me believe that the way we are currently set up in MoP and the way we're still set up in WoD (which is why we aren't working right now) is smart healing. Healing Rain (as of 5.4)? Smart heal. Chain Heal? Smart heal. HST? Smart heal. HTT? Smart heal. The only IJ log I have that isn't expired (I'm missing a lot of the times I've gone resto since I went enhance after I finished progression and a few of the times I've swapped to resto for a fight weren't logged) shows those four heals as 68.3% of our healing done. The healing meta has shifted so that supposedly overhealing should be less of a thing and bad RNG shouldn't happen very often, but it does put us at the mercy of RNG with little to no control over it.

We won't be the only one with this issue. Mushroom and Wild Growth for rdruids can do this (though isn't Wild Growth a location based spread not an injured one anyway?). Circle of Healing for holy priests and I guess their AoE stance ability can sort of do it. Hpallies Light of Dawn can do it. Monks have had this problem even with smart healing in SoO at least. However, it affects a much greater portion of our healing than it does other classes. A lot more of our healing is random targets than it is for any other class. They can try and shift it all to the most control we have over our healing (Riptide and Chain Heal) but I keep hearing about how Blizz (and some select players in here) don't want a Chain Heal spam which is the best way to counter this RNGsham without changing mechanics of some abilities entirely (which I wouldn't disagree with).

Am I wrong? Am I blowing this out of proportion? I am pretty upset at a lot of the changes in WoD (especially to my by far favorite fury warrior) so I may just be talking through that annoyed side.

no your not blowing it out of proportion i have been playing a rshaman since wrath and its been a pretty rocky road. While wrath and bc were alright cata was horrible. We were only good in DS due to massive CH and HR buffs along with stacked fights in the majority of encounters. Start of Mop was ok with us fufilling a cool new burst healing role. It got worse as healers started to scale though. Tot was crap and we were walking mana batteries. We were even out healed in our "niche" of stacked healing on megaera. We became good again in Soo due to yet again massive buffs to CH and HR.

So you are kind of a FOTM if you only started in SOO. We have been mechanically clunky and the underdogs for a long time. The only time we are good is when we are OP and then every flocks to us at the end of an expansion. We don't get looked at because of this and the root cause is never addressed. Then everyone leaves and the cycle repeats. Furthermore pretty much the only really good shaman healers you see are the ones who have sticked with it throughout the ups and downs. Everyone else tends to fade out unless its a spam fight where there is no skill in it. However there really hasn't been much skill required in the class to begin with just knowledge into making the mechanics work right when a fight sucks balls for you.

As far as smart healing goes we have always been a smart healing style class with CH. HST and HR came into the picture later and made it even more so. This was fine since it works with out mastery and made us strong without having to target select or snipe heals. Dumb heals makes our mastery even more dumb (current iteration has always been a sour point and extremely bad for balancing pve/pvp). Essentially in order for us to be able to break away from our spam CH/HR playstyle we need an extremely tight tuning balance (as to not make those spells useless) or huge mechanical changes. Furthermore our single target heals should 1 shot top people to make us want to use them.

As for your inquiry Wild growth currently targets the 5 most injured players and puts a hot on them within 40 yards. in beta this is changed to 5 damaged people instead of a smart heal. Its not really location based. Same goes for most of the abilities you listed which is a major irritation for rshaman because we have the most location limited spells of all the healers.

Finally we weren't really a jack of all trades. It was more like we had CD mania going on and our cds don't require us to channel like you said so we can set and forget them. Our spread healing was still incredibly weak and bandaged by the buffs to HST and RT. We have always been more of the hard casting hard hitting type. Which has been a good strength and a big weakness.

[SH4D0WS1N]

So you are kind of a FOTM if you only started in SOO. We have been mechanically clunky and the underdogs for a long time. The only time we are good is when we are OP and then every flocks to us at the end of an expansion. We don't get looked at because of this and the root cause is never addressed. Then everyone leaves and the cycle repeats. Furthermore pretty much the only really good shaman healers you see are the ones who have sticked with it throughout the ups and downs. Everyone else tends to fade out unless its a spam fight where there is no skill in it. However there really hasn't been much skill required in the class to begin with just knowledge into making the mechanics work right when a fight sucks balls for you.

Finally we weren't really a jack of all trades. It was more like we had CD mania going on and our cds don't require us to channel like you said so we can set and forget them. Our spread healing was still incredibly weak and bandaged by the buffs to HST and RT. We have always been more of the hard casting hard hitting type. Which has been a good strength and a big weakness.

I've only raided in 3 tiers total in WoW. ICC as ret pally, DS as rsham, and SoO as rsham. It's rather unfortunate that my main in 2/3 was FotM (or was ret FotM too D: ), I didn't actually pick the FotM, it was just what I selected as my main before I even got into raiding that tier.

Maybe Jack of All Trades wasn't the best term, I just felt like there was always something I could use to handle the current situation unless it involved tanks (though I've used SLT as a tank external a few times). Maybe it was because we had such a plethora of cds that I felt like that. I didn't feel like "Oh shit, tranq is down and they're too spread for shroom what will I do?" or "Oh no my 90 talent is down, I have literally no way to bring up this raid" because I always had something to press to fix that.

[shammypie]

I've only raided in 3 tiers total in WoW. ICC as ret pally, DS as rsham, and SoO as rsham. It's rather unfortunate that my main in 2/3 was FotM (or was ret FotM too D: ), I didn't actually pick the FotM, it was just what I selected as my main before I even got into raiding that tier.

Maybe Jack of All Trades wasn't the best term, I just felt like there was always something I could use to handle the current situation unless it involved tanks (though I've used SLT as a tank external a few times). Maybe it was because we had such a plethora of cds that I felt like that. I didn't feel like "Oh shit, tranq is down and they're too spread for shroom what will I do?" or "Oh no my 90 talent is down, I have literally no way to bring up this raid" because I always had something to press to fix that.

Ret was ok in ICC about above average due to everything being undead and autocrits on exo. But yeah you kind of had it easy since rshaman are usually really power last tier of an expac and crap everywhere else.

Also Druids have a good amount of healing they can do as well in spread situations. I would actually bank them as better spread healers than we are. If they have the riad hotted like they are suppose to they can genesis as an impronto tranquility. Rshamans are more limited since Ascendance only has a 20 yard range and AG is usually only taken when you have a high damage in short intervals (thok/garrosh). Otherwise we are actually shit up the creak without a paddle usually. Hell in cata we didn't even have CDs at all. This only came about in mop.

Anyway i'm not harping on you i was just trying to gauge your experience and give you a little background of someone whos been playing nonstop since becoming a wrath baby. Typically Paladins and Druids are fairly stable in terms of preformance and the right player really makes them shine or flop. Priests usually have a really good spec and a really bad spec. Monks are the new kids on the block and alternate between broken and worthless. Shamans follow monks but with a deep bitter history and less rework/attention. As a disclaimer any of the above classes might argue differently wink wink. Actually there were quite a number of monks in the mop beta trolling the forums.

Altogether though i am actually optimistic about this expac. We actually have tools to deal with different raid situations. Whether i stick with my Shaman or not will come down to tuning though. Right now everything is tuned wrong. The number of healer spots is only 5 now for 6 competing specs. Furthermore we no longer have the raid utility that encourages RL to takes us over another druid. Your spot is going to all come down to output. Don't get me wrong i am still going to level my shaman on launch day, but i am also going to level either my druid or priest. Actually i am going to level several toons for professions but that's a different story.

[Aviators]

Oh by the way, how is the glyph selection looking?

[Barrun]

Oh by the way, how is the glyph selection looking?

Glyph selection is about the same as it is on live except there are a few options for modifying Spiritwalker's Grace, my only tiff is that the Chain Heal glyph is pretty much mandatory, otherwise I'm pretty happy with the selection.

[Deleted]

Here's a thing i don't get: in what shape or form is removal of Ancestral Vigor "Ability Pruning"? Yay for the one more free keybind... OHWAIT?

I get the reasons why they're removing it (unique buffs were a nono since TBC), but can we at least not pretend it's something that was creating "Ability Bloat" in the slightest? You didn't even have to know it's there to benefit from it, how is that causing the class to be confusing/have too many spells...

Problem is, other healers still have things "unique" to them and we still lack a solid tank CD. We're currently left in the dust in every single last aspect. Sure we can do most things, but another healer is simply better and usually has a more rounded tool kit.

we were missing all of our purification passives for testing today, so shaman was really shit

Even with purification it wont be all that great, if you don't believe me go to the official US beta forum where people with around 30-40 garrosh HC kills discuss rerolling onto another class because even with improved numbers, there's simply no reason to bring a resto shaman over another healer as it currently stands for various reasons.

[Deleted]

I apologize but i just have to say this: The removal of AV was just fucking mindless. No reason to do that at all. lolz abilitypruning.

[Zaxvriin]

To point out the other side: No reason AV should exist in the first place. Nobody should bring a raid buff that only they can provide. If anything, they assigned some "heal value" associated with it, so that you healed for less because you were providing some "buffer" to health pools.

For those going on about AV/Mana tide and justifying raid spot: If things like that are needed to justify raid spot, then the class is broken(I mean it is broken, and Blizzard seems intent on not bothering to actually fix it) and needs to be fixed healing wise, not with bandaids like AV.

[Barrun]

To point out the other side: No reason AV should exist in the first place. Nobody should bring a raid buff that only they can provide. If anything, they assigned some "heal value" associated with it, so that you healed for less because you were providing some "buffer" to health pools.

The same could be said about absorbs.

[Deleted]

For those going on about AV/Mana tide and justifying raid spot: If things like that are needed to justify raid spot, then the class is broken(I mean it is broken, and Blizzard seems intent on not bothering to actually fix it) and needs to be fixed healing wise, not with bandaids like AV.

But it's not getting fixed. That's the problem. These were, obviously, crutches that we used to stay relevant. Now they're gone and we most likely we will not be able to compete, as per usual. With raid size reduction, going down a healer or two, we will get the axe.

[Deleted]

To point out the other side: No reason AV should exist in the first place. Nobody should bring a raid buff that only they can provide. If anything, they assigned some "heal value" associated with it, so that you healed for less because you were providing some "buffer" to health pools.

For those going on about AV/Mana tide and justifying raid spot: If things like that are needed to justify raid spot, then the class is broken(I mean it is broken, and Blizzard seems intent on not bothering to actually fix it) and needs to be fixed healing wise, not with bandaids like AV.

and the problem is that they are not fixing us and that is why ppl are asking why take stuff like AV. I agree 100% with u no class should bring unique buffs (although i can also agree 100% that they should) IF the class can be competable with the other healers and we are not soo... ppl complain what else can a player do?

[Deleted]

For those going on about AV/Mana tide and justifying raid spot: If things like that are needed to justify raid spot, then the class is broken(I mean it is broken, and Blizzard seems intent on not bothering to actually fix it) and needs to be fixed healing wise, not with bandaids like AV.

That's only true for a perfect class balance scenario which has yet to happen since the launch.

There is always the best and the worst class in terms of general average throughput. And whilst people have never been stubborn enough to take only certain classes just because they outperform the second ones by a 0.05 % margin, things like Ancestral Vigor made things clearer, such that even when our class was 3rd on the average throughput rankings, we still could easily justify our (let's say even one) raid spot.