Resto Shaman is dead.

[Mirean]

On MOTHER and Vectis, SLT is really good, that is true - it allows you to send many people at once and stabilize the raid with absorb debuffs. However, on other bosses, I don't think it's really crucial. Taloc is fine, but it's still an entry-level boss, which is in my opinion much easier than HC G'huun, so anyone that killed G'huun shouldn't have any troubles there, which really reduces SLT potential. On zek'voz, it's only useful when small adds spawn and many people get hit for some reason or when tanks forget to swap, but both of those are quite easily avoidable. On fetid, the only reasonable way I can see it being used is as a 10% dmg reduction on tanks in enrage. On Zul I don't see any real benefit of using it, other CDs are much better for all types of damage. Mythrax is bad again for SLT and on G'huun, it is really usable only when stacking for blood feast.

So out of the 8 bosses, SLT is really good on 2, average on another 2, still usable but pretty meh on 2 more and totally useless on remaining 2.

I'm not saying it's a trash CD. It can save lives and sometimes it pretty much trivializes the fight. In other cases, it can help recover from a fuckup. However, in most instances, that is not true and since you need to be spread for majority of the fights, it does practically nothing there. No other CD is like this, except for barrier which can be talented into something useful anyway.

It also doesn't show up on good healing meters, which isn't really a problem, HPS isn't useful metric, but it causes shamans to appear lower in logs than other healers - something that is often used as an argument for shamans being bad and people complaining about raw throughput.

If we had something like the PVP spirit link talent - yeah, I wouldn't complain, it would still be useful on fights like fetid or mythrax, but as of now, it's the only raid CD in the game that has severe limitations and cannot be used on some fights at all.

[Deleted]

I gotta say I'm really disappointed in the healer balancing this expansion. The nerfs and buffs they applied so far did almost nothing for the overall balance. Both priest specs got nerfed - still on top, with Disc bringing the damage of half a Dps on top of being the strongest healing spec. Mistweaver is allowed to do 35% of their healing just from pressing Essence Font. Shamans got buffed twice, still last place by a small chunk. Only the Healing Surge buff was noticeable for M+.
The only spec that's balanced properly imo are paladins, because they have a niche that's an actual niche (tank healing) while being powerful for M+ and druids are fine too, their HoTs just suffer from Disc and Mistweaver being so strong.

I'm wondering if 8.1 will bring more balancing changes, or if they'll just leave this half-baked balance for half of the expansion now.

[shammypie]

I gotta say I'm really disappointed in the healer balancing this expansion. The nerfs and buffs they applied so far did almost nothing for the overall balance. Both priest specs got nerfed - still on top, with Disc bringing the damage of half a Dps on top of being the strongest healing spec. Mistweaver is allowed to do 35% of their healing just from pressing Essence Font. Shamans got buffed twice, still last place by a small chunk. Only the Healing Surge buff was noticeable for M+.
The only spec that's balanced properly imo are paladins, because they have a niche that's an actual niche (tank healing) while being powerful for M+ and druids are fine too, their HoTs just suffer from Disc and Mistweaver being so strong.

I'm wondering if 8.1 will bring more balancing changes, or if they'll just leave this half-baked balance for half of the expansion now.

most paladins are on the bottom in raids

[Deleted]

most paladins are on the bottom in raids

https://www.warcraftlogs.com/zone/st...metric=tankhps But not in tank healing. That's why I think that the spec is balanced properly, because they actually excel at their niche, like it should be. Unlike shamans, who are just average at their niche and worse at everything else (spread and tank healing).

[acilsd]

Let's just admit blizz are bad at buffing something (like, really, they are giving 5% total buff to feral droods four times in a row and they still suck huh). That means they just need to nerf hpriests and mwmonsks to the gound and everyone is happy ;3

[BiggestNoob]

Ion's latest justification is more delusional nonsense. He overvalues the hell out of SLT and thinks AV is good by comparison to EWT. This coming from someone who mains the spec yet tried like 40 pulls of mythic Vectis with chain heal spam on targets > 50% HP, OOMing in ~3 minutes. Even after he switched to Wellspring, he's still trying to run AV, without being able to put it on people with chain heal, and ignoring the fact that EWT is one of the most mana efficient heals rsham has, and provides more value than AV even in the best case on a fight like Vectis.

I don't think he understands the class at all or how to play rsham, but these are just his justifications for the teams under him who have failed with rsham. Even after significant buffs, it's not good in M+ and is still being crushed in fights optimal for it (Vectis + Zul).

Meanwhile, priest offers barrier which is in every way superior to SLT in this entire raid instance, have an external, and can PW:R and atonement spam for consistent spread or stacked burst healing. Chain heal is barely worth using even with high tide, and wellspring remains better than high tide for stacked fights.

Resto is broken, and it doesn't look like Blizzard is going to fix it. Time to fully reroll.

[Koor]

Ion's comment that AV 10% HP buff may save lives is more suited to the old legion meta in which there were plenty oneshots in M+ that were on a fixed timer and we could prepare and buff someone 10% just before it hits, but nowdays the meta has shifted and lots of encounters have sustained damage.

Just saw on stream a druid almost heal the third boss in temple tyrannical on +18 pulling off 42k HPS (1% wipe). We're just undertuned and can't pull off those numbers as resto shamans even if everyone is stacked, let alone if the party is spread and we need to move.

[Deleted]

Ion's latest justification is more delusional nonsense. He overvalues the hell out of SLT and thinks AV is good by comparison to EWT. This coming from someone who mains the spec yet tried like 40 pulls of mythic Vectis with chain heal spam on targets > 50% HP, OOMing in ~3 minutes. Even after he switched to Wellspring, he's still trying to run AV, without being able to put it on people with chain heal, and ignoring the fact that EWT is one of the most mana efficient heals rsham has, and provides more value than AV even in the best case on a fight like Vectis.

I don't think he understands the class at all or how to play rsham, but these are just his justifications for the teams under him who have failed with rsham. Even after significant buffs, it's not good in M+ and is still being crushed in fights optimal for it (Vectis + Zul).

Meanwhile, priest offers barrier which is in every way superior to SLT in this entire raid instance, have an external, and can PW:R and atonement spam for consistent spread or stacked burst healing. Chain heal is barely worth using even with high tide, and wellspring remains better than high tide for stacked fights.

Resto is broken, and it doesn't look like Blizzard is going to fix it. Time to fully reroll.

I'm curious, where can I see Ion's logs? Is his character publicly known?

Ancestral Vigor should just be baseline again. Then you could say, shamans bring at least nice (baseline) support to the raid. But it's not worth the talent point for raiding, I haven't seen a shaman pick it there in BfA either. Don't they have insight into the player data and see that the talent isn't used much in high end raiding?
And by the way Disc shields safe lives just as often and Disc can also talent into 3% dmg reduction. Still they are allowed to do top Hps at the same time (and even bring some Dps too).

[Hypasonic]

I think they are fine, shamans shouldn't be topping hps meters under normal circumstances and you can't really compare HTT to tranq when tranq requires you to be still throughout and you can't use any other spells during it like shamans can do with HTT. You still have the 10% hp talent, the ankh totem, an interupt, aoe stun, spirit link etc. Disc should be toned down for the same reason, since they bring alot of dps compared to other healers yet they seemingly do the most hps too aswell as being the only healer with 2 healing specs to choose from of which holy is really strong also.

[Kalisandra]

I think they are fine, shamans shouldn't be topping hps meters under normal circumstances and you can't really compare HTT to tranq when tranq requires you to be still throughout and you can't use any other spells during it like shamans can do with HTT. You still have the 10% hp talent, the ankh totem, an interupt, aoe stun, spirit link etc. Disc should be toned down for the same reason, since they bring alot of dps compared to other healers yet they seemingly do the most hps too aswell as being the only healer with 2 healing specs to choose from of which holy is really strong also.

HTT, plus Healing Rain, plus casting Chain Heal through the duration of HTT does about the same healing as Tranq, over slightly longer, and at the cost of 6-7 times the mana. If everyone is really low, it'll do a bit more, assuming the other healer doesn't help too much and push everyone's health up too fast. In theory, being able to drop HTT and then continue with normal healing should be very powerful. In practice it's not, because you have to be running flat out to compete with other mass raid healing spells, and that's hard on mana. For a Druid or a Holy Priest, using their mass heal is also a break on their mana consumption. It used to be for us as well, but now it simply isn't. Also, the other mass heals have doubled power outside of raids, making them useful in 5-mans. HTT does not.

Ankh totem and +10% health are on the same row, and earthen wall totem is considered better.

As for not topping HPS meters - if the raid is stacked, why shouldn't Shamans top meters in progression where health will often spike low and Shaman mastery should shine? If Shamans can't top meters early in a raid with lots of stacking, they'll never top meters, and stacked raids on low health is where Shamans are supposed to be at their best. Shamans losing healing spots as raids go on farm is annoying, but understandable. Shamans not being welcome when they should be the go-to healer means they'll be benched permanently.

Right now, Resto Shamans are the least popular healer by log numbers for m+ (looking at warcraftlogs.com), and only Holy Priests underperform them (and they can go Disc and become as gods). Overall, in mythic raiding they are the least popular healer, though numbers are fairly even (making Priests about twice as popular as any other class), however, when you look at parse numbers on each individual boss only on MOTHER are Shamans popular healers, and only on MOTHER and Vectis does their throughput not suck.

Utility does not cover for this, especially as Shamans lack a tank cooldown, lack a unique/semi-unique raid buff, and other healers have utility as well. Heck, even Priests do, given how useful Mass Dispel can be these days. It is nice that Hex is somewhat useful these days, but if the healer is the one having to CC adds, your RL might need to be having a chat with their DPS.

In previous expansions, terrible spread healing (often still better than today, mind), was somewhat compensated for by amazing stacked healing, especially with the many CDs Shamans had. Now the stacked healing is lacking, and Shamans don't have the CDs either.

[Hypasonic]

HTT, plus Healing Rain, plus casting Chain Heal through the duration of HTT does about the same healing as Tranq, over slightly longer, and at the cost of 6-7 times the mana. If everyone is really low, it'll do a bit more, assuming the other healer doesn't help too much and push everyone's health up too fast. In theory, being able to drop HTT and then continue with normal healing should be very powerful. In practice it's not, because you have to be running flat out to compete with other mass raid healing spells, and that's hard on mana. For a Druid or a Holy Priest, using their mass heal is also a break on their mana consumption. It used to be for us as well, but now it simply isn't. Also, the other mass heals have doubled power outside of raids, making them useful in 5-mans. HTT does not.

Ankh totem and +10% health are on the same row, and earthen wall totem is considered better.

As for not topping HPS meters - if the raid is stacked, why shouldn't Shamans top meters in progression where health will often spike low and Shaman mastery should shine? If Shamans can't top meters early in a raid with lots of stacking, they'll never top meters, and stacked raids on low health is where Shamans are supposed to be at their best. Shamans losing healing spots as raids go on farm is annoying, but understandable. Shamans not being welcome when they should be the go-to healer means they'll be benched permanently.

Right now, Resto Shamans are the least popular healer by log numbers for m+ (looking at warcraftlogs.com), and only Holy Priests underperform them (and they can go Disc and become as gods). Overall, in mythic raiding they are the least popular healer, though numbers are fairly even (making Priests about twice as popular as any other class), however, when you look at parse numbers on each individual boss only on MOTHER are Shamans popular healers, and only on MOTHER and Vectis does their throughput not suck.

Utility does not cover for this, especially as Shamans lack a tank cooldown, lack a unique/semi-unique raid buff, and other healers have utility as well. Heck, even Priests do, given how useful Mass Dispel can be these days. It is nice that Hex is somewhat useful these days, but if the healer is the one having to CC adds, your RL might need to be having a chat with their DPS.

In previous expansions, terrible spread healing (often still better than today, mind), was somewhat compensated for by amazing stacked healing, especially with the many CDs Shamans had. Now the stacked healing is lacking, and Shamans don't have the CDs either.

Yeah I agree that on stacked fights shamans should blow every other healer out of the water, (no pun intended) when you look at vectis and see discs doing 9k+hps or so more on average, (atleast for the top public logs) it seems a bit wonky. Then again, I imagine most guilds running a disc let them have wisdom and maybe even innervates further inflating their overall hps. This is the first tier for many years that our guild hasn't ran with a shaman for main progression (Then again, our shaman had a disc alt, so was kinda an easy decision xd) But still, the "holy trinity" that I call it (Pala/Priest/Shaman) has atleast been broken in BFA for now. It always bothered me how a class could bring so much utility whilst doing good hps also so I'm glad blizz have toned it down. As someone who mains a druid, I'm kinda happy about that lol. Blizz just need to do something to manke shamans the best healer in constant stacked fights, especially on a fight like vectis which is one of the "healer" fights in uldir.

I suspect going into the next tier shamans will become more popular, as they have been in the past. I don't know much of shamans in m+ but the general concensus is they just aren't as good as the others, so I have no idea why HTT doesn't get the same treatment as tranq/hymn does in 5 mans. Possibly because blizz think that combined with the mastery it would simply make the party unkillable for the 8 secs or so that its down? xd I honestly have no idea.

[Surreality]

That's weird because mine still seems to be working just fine. Sure, I'm not at the top of the healing charts. In fact, much of the time I'm dead last for healers. The thing is that the difference between me and the top person is an insignificant amount. As a team we get things done. The boss goes down is the only thing that matters to me. What I do as an individual is far less important than what I can do for the team.

[Elestia]

Shaman is BfA's first dead class. I've been kicked out of more raids than I can count this expansion- I've raided resto, ele and enhance at a high level since cata.

[BiggestNoob]

That's weird because mine still seems to be working just fine. Sure, I'm not at the top of the healing charts. In fact, much of the time I'm dead last for healers. The thing is that the difference between me and the top person is an insignificant amount. As a team we get things done. The boss goes down is the only thing that matters to me. What I do as an individual is far less important than what I can do for the team.

I also enjoy overhealing and overgearing content, wiping excessively, and being a detriment to my raid. Nothing says teamwork like asking to be carried or waiting to do content.

[Kalisandra]

As someone who mains a druid, I'm kinda happy about that lol.

Druids have been amazing healers very often in the past. They just tend to get overlooked because most of what they do isn't flashy. The HoTs tick away, your health goes down and then rises again, and it's sort of invisible. When a Shaman heals you your health goes down, probably lot, and then spikes back up. You know when they've landed a heal on you. Well, you used to. Now it takes several heals and you wonder if the healer is actually awake.

I suspect going into the next tier shamans will become more popular, as they have been in the past. I don't know much of shamans in m+ but the general concensus is they just aren't as good as the others, so I have no idea why HTT doesn't get the same treatment as tranq/hymn does in 5 mans. Possibly because blizz think that combined with the mastery it would simply make the party unkillable for the 8 secs or so that its down? xd I honestly have no idea.

That's kind of the point of a major mass healing CD. As for Shamans in m+, healing them is hard - your mana just goes down and down and your ability to recover from mistakes is not really there, even in fairly low level runs. Underrot is awful without a really pro group, for example.

- - - Updated - - -

That's weird because mine still seems to be working just fine. Sure, I'm not at the top of the healing charts. In fact, much of the time I'm dead last for healers. The thing is that the difference between me and the top person is an insignificant amount. As a team we get things done. The boss goes down is the only thing that matters to me. What I do as an individual is far less important than what I can do for the team.

I get about 2/3 - 3/4 the throughput of our similarly geared Holy Priest. Unlike them (or our Druid) I have no mana recovery ability, and no Mass Dispel or equivalent to trivialise an entire raid mechanic (Minions of Zul) either. The Priest's mass-healing CD, as I mention above, is as strong as mine is if I have a stacked raid and spam heals into it as my totem is down, meaning that they will gain mana while channeling it, while I lose a massive amount. If the raid isn't stacked, their heal is twice as strong as mine (so I'd have to pop Ascendance and HTT together to get similar effect).

Unlike the Paladin I can't even claim that what healing I do is amazing spot healing saving lives, with amazing tank healing on the side. I've held in the past that Shamans were good at saving people who spiked low, with our Mastery and fast single-target heals, but we don't get Tidal Wave charges as easily now, and our heals just aren't that big, so we aren't.

As for being part of a team, that's all very well and good, but if your team would be stronger with you on a Holy Priest, you're actually making work for your fellow healers by not swapping. Fortunately, my guild is okay with people bringing the specs they like, and not the currently best ones so I'm okay. It still feels bad knowing that I could make life a bunch easier for everyone by levelling a Priest or Monk though.

[coprax]

I'm curious, where can I see Ion's logs? Is his character publicly known?

This is his character: https://worldofwarcraft.com/en-us/ch...anis/gurgthock

[Deleted]

This is his character:

I say it again: someone who pulls less heal than Blood DK with grey ratings shouldnt be raiding and the only reason he is in there, in my opinion, is his status.
But its understandable why he thinks Blood should be nerfed, instead of other tanks being buffed, its clearly not the shaman class that is in dire need of buffing.

His Key logs look the same and its such a shame.

[Deleted]

This is his character: https://worldofwarcraft.com/en-us/ch...anis/gurgthock

Thanks! Oh damn, I didn't expect so many grey logs from a game director. He can't possibly enjoy this, barely beating the tank..

[Elestia]

Shamans should have a dance party until the class gets fixed...

[Deleted]

Right now raiding on a monk , druid and resto as third. Monk is clearly the strongest but resto has its niche compared to resto -shamanthat is just horrible. The niche we have is just not supported by the output we have during those brief moments we can shine.
We just cant keep up in raw healing. In my opinion i would like to see .a change to the mastery.