Battle Shaman, how the hell did things get this bad?

[PhilUK]

I'll be honest I haven't played a Shaman seriously since Legion but I could already see the issues with throughput even back then but I still felt like the spec had a place in a raid for other than its CDs. Now Restoration for Ny'alotha is a contender to be brought in but only as a DPS healer that is only there for the cooldowns. I'm sorry but wtf I've always known the mastery to be a completely pos but this is insane, no healer should only be brought for just the CDs ever and to be relegated to just DPS is insane.

How the hell is Resto Shaman meant to come back from this, the spec is going to need a complete rebuild before Shadowlands.

[Jotaux]

I'll be honest I haven't played a Shaman seriously since Legion but I could already see the issues with throughput even back then but I still felt like the spec had a place in a raid for other than its CDs. Now Restoration for Ny'alotha is a contender to be brought in but only as a DPS healer that is only there for the cooldowns. I'm sorry but wtf I've always known the mastery to be a completely pos but this is insane, no healer should only be brought for just the CDs ever and to be relegated to just DPS is insane.

How the hell is Resto Shaman meant to come back from this, the spec is going to need a complete rebuild before Shadowlands.

Even for Mythic Jaina, I went resto and just dpsed the entire time. The only healing role thing I did was dispel and drop totems when I was told to.

[Kalisandra]

While it wouldn't be compelling gameplay, all they need to do to make Resto Shamans sought after for raids is to buff their group healing (especially Healing Rain) and make fights where you should group up in a big pile and take massive group healing. Like quite a few in Throne of Thunder, and like Gorefiend in HFC. Then the correct start would be to bunch up in the Rain, let the raids' health get low and the Resto pops a CD and brings them all back up using the insane throughput their CDs and Mastery give when everyone is low. Then the Shaman goes back to being rubbish and the other healers get back to work.

A less extreme version of this would give the Shamans a healing role without relying entirely on their mastery and CDs.

The problem isn't the Mastery in and of itself. It's that the devs seem to have completely given up on challenging healer's mana in a way that allows you to trade the raid's overall health levels for mana, so letting the raid get low so that the Shaman can efficiently heal them is both pointless and dangerous. So either raid design needs to change or the mastery does. The thing is, one needs to be careful what you wish for - what you want in a new Mastery and what Blizzard gives you are likely to be quite different things. I'm pretty sure no Paladin at the time wanted what they have now.

[Dziubla]

Player perception, and idiotic guides ("What Healer you SHOULD play in Ny'alotha") are the biggest problem, not the shaman. Even utility aside, so far I'm ahead of every single other healer on almost every single fight (with exception of holy pala, haven't played with one in raid so far). A lot of Ny'alotha fights have raid stacked for parts of the fight, or even entire fight, and you can REALLY shine there with a sham. But that would require people to stop listening to guides, and actually play the class.

The only problem I have with rsham is lack of strong tank cd, but other than that...it's really nowhere near as bad as idiotic guides like to tell the crowd. Not in terms of numbers, and certainly not in terms of utility.

[bloodmoth13]

Is this actually a real problem? I think its good gameplay to have healers/tanks being able to trade their primary utility for dps if they are fulfilling their job well enough.
In fact i think this should be expanded on if anything since it loosens up encounter design, raises skill cap and promotes dynamic decision making.

[Nfinitii]

Method came out with a video for mythic progression and said Resto is the 3rd best healer overall and in hps.

Also said that player skill matters more than the class.

Sounds like it’s a you problem.

[dragi]

Method came out with a video for mythic progression and said Resto is the 3rd best healer overall and in hps.

Also said that player skill matters more than the class.

Sounds like it’s a you problem.

Also Method in previously patches brings shamans only for spirit link totem...

[Mashingspoon]

I really like the idea of battle shaman, and now that I'm playing one, I still think they're great. I'm having a blast dpsing and being able to dump my entire Mana bar and save the raid a few times per fight. I kinda feel like a disc priest in the sense that you have crazy dps but can pump heals when you need, but 1, it's less difficult, and 2. It has much larger burst throughput/ability to top people off (see: grevious), and the utility! Idk maybe it's j cause I haven't played shaman since legion, but I'm having a great time with battle shaman

[Atraxxa]

I'll be honest I haven't played a Shaman seriously since Legion but I could already see the issues with throughput even back then but I still felt like the spec had a place in a raid for other than its CDs. Now Restoration for Ny'alotha is a contender to be brought in but only as a DPS healer that is only there for the cooldowns. I'm sorry but wtf I've always known the mastery to be a completely pos but this is insane, no healer should only be brought for just the CDs ever and to be relegated to just DPS is insane.

How the hell is Resto Shaman meant to come back from this, the spec is going to need a complete rebuild before Shadowlands.

Im not sure what game you have been playing, but for the last several expansions healers are expected to dps, look at the Mythic plus scene, healer strength is determined by how much dps they can put out. Disc priest has always had this kind of playstyle, and tbh i think its awesome for Shamans to have this kind of flexibility, you are looking at this like a negative when its actually a positive.

[music49]

I think maybe a mastery rework would really help the healing aspect of this spec. I just don't know how though, maybe some kind of over healing game play, or if you heal you're totems they last longer? I don't know just some ideas, I'm just the back up healer when one of our healers is out.

I wouldn't mind resto themed abilities like drowning your enemies with "water" dot or as simple as re-skinned ele abilities

[Sharby]

I think maybe a mastery rework would really help the healing aspect of this spec. I just don't know how though, maybe some kind of over healing game play, or if you heal you're totems they last longer? I don't know just some ideas, I'm just the back up healer when one of our healers is out.

I wouldn't mind resto themed abilities like drowning your enemies with "water" dot or as simple as re-skinned ele abilities

I think their mastery should also reward you for keeping allies topped off.



Something like:


Your spells refund 40% of their cost when cast on targets higher than 50%, this bonus increases the higher HP target has.





--


It would be a nice way to get value out of it no matter when you heal like other healers instead of only being useful when someone is low.

[-aiko-]

Healing throughput isn't that bad...certainly not to the point that Restos are only brought for cooldowns and are expected to DPS. I have no idea where that idea is coming from but it's utter nonsense. It could use some numbers tuning, but an entire rework? Are you crazy? I just don't see it, and the logs aren't backing it up as far as I can tell.

[Echeyakee]

Healing throughput isn't that bad...certainly not to the point that Restos are only brought for cooldowns and are expected to DPS. I have no idea where that idea is coming from but it's utter nonsense. It could use some numbers tuning, but an entire rework? Are you crazy? I just don't see it, and the logs aren't backing it up as far as I can tell.

I agree, I think the problem is based in skewed public perception, rather than in any facts. People saw world first guilds use shammies that way, and parroted it to the point where it became the perceived truth.

Sure, shammies fit right in to that pigeonhole, they do a considerable amount of DPS and have access to a lot of fire and forget raid cooldowns. But high-end guilds only do that because they need to cut healers to meet the DPS requirements, while needing healing CDs to deal with mechanics, and shammies are the best class for the job.

But the actual healing numbers wise, balance is decent right now. Sure, there is still a noticeable difference between the top performing specs and the ones at the bottom, but de facto healer skill will make much more of a difference.

If anything, the issue of healer DPS is a much more relevant one for shadowlands. Right now we have disc and paladins doing tank like or above DPS with no detriment to their healing, while monks are not even comparable, despite having talents to support that playstyle. And the other specs need to stop healing entirely to do damage, and are still unable to compete (except druids, who can compete, but still need to stop healing).

With M+ refusing to go away, the old excuse of "it's fine, classes should be different" does not fly any more. At least not in this case.

[Marrilaife]

Player perception, and idiotic guides ("What Healer you SHOULD play in Ny'alotha") are the biggest problem, not the shaman.

Tbh resto druids suffer even worse from that syndrome, everyone seems to believe they're only good for m+ not raids even though I could see a few fights in Nyalotha where resto druid healing pattern would fit just fine.

And about "just pop cds and then dps" I swear both in my current guild and my previous guild that was the role of the disc priest. I mean a case where the priest heals fuck all, parses grey on hps, but as long as they press barrier and smite they get zero criticism from the raid leader and even protection from other people's criticism. Meanwhile all the other healers have to cover the missing hps.

If your guild leads refuse to bring you because the internet told them so; you are better off with a different guild.

I'm so sick and tired of this advice. I've been in 5 guilds since Legion started and ALL of them persecuted me one way or another for the class I play. I'm on the tank camp not healer, but it's the same story. I'm seriously on the verge of giving up because the "play what you want" proves time and time again to be just a sugar coated lie. And I'm not even counting the cases where the guild shut me down early in recruitment process because they were only interested in the most fotm class nothing else.

And yes, I've seen that happen to healers as well, as I said above mostly resto druids from BODA and on when everyone and their dog caught up to the "meta" of hpal + disc + maybe shaman if there's more room or we need link / ankh totem / speed totem / tremor.

Like seriously, how much energy and perseverance can a person muster until they give up and either reroll fotm or quit from mythic raiding / wow altogether.

It's becoming worse and worse with the widespread streaming of world top guilds raid progression everyone started to attempt to copy not only their strats, but also raid comps. It was nowhere near as bad 5-7 years ago and it feels it's getting progressively worse.

[dragi]

In this expansion not first time when shaman resto is only spirit link totem.

[Mightytasty]

Resto mastery is useless in the games current state. Need to bring back big health pools and raise mana costs, I.e. Cataclysm.

[Marrilaife]

Well, Ive played enhancement since I began raiding back in wrath. Gotten every AotC achievement with my guild safe for 1. Granted, we dont do mythic progression, but neither do most of the guilds out there.

Then why do you give generalistic advice and don't state in your original post that you speak from casual stand point? I wouldn't bother making a post if I knew it's spoken from a heroic raider point of view. Heroic can be cleared in a pug so ofc even if you can't find a guild that will take you, you aren't even out of options you can just pug / make your own group.

I didn't think that someone who says "world first race is over" would see nothing in between heroic raiding and "world first race". This is another issue I see a lot that crops up from both heroic and mythic raiders: either you don't raid mythic, or you are expected to tryhard like a world first raider even if you have no aspirations to be one and it takes your guild 3-5 months to clear mythic as opposed to world first guilds that finish in 2 weeks.

There's way too many mythic raiders / guilds that expect you to jump through hoops that should not be necessary judging from their progression speed, and too many heroic raiders that justify it by saying "well if you raid mythic it's expected that you're hardcore".

Obviously class balance could be better and azerite traits created this problem where resto shaman has to specialize either in healing or in lava bursting between their totems. This issue also stems from the fact that some raids, like Eternal Palace, are designed extremely badly - there's not enough constant healing needed to occupy 4-5 healers all the time (except couple of bosses like Orgozoa and early Sivarra), but there's enough "big boom" abilities to need another healing cooldown to layer. Mythic Azshara was literally the worst.

Current raid has some of such encounters too. Mythic Ilgynoth is one of the worst designed bosses because the "cheese strat" with no dispels became pre dominant because Blizzard had an idiotic idea that doesn't take into consideration how 99% of healers operate in this game, which is staring at raid frames / healing addons. Because of that, it's impossible to do proper dispel rotation without relying on excessive communication (or maybe someone invented a weak aura for it, dunno, we killed it with "no dispel" strat). If they wanted to make a fight that rewards healers for dispelling at a correct time, they should have made it visible for healers when the debuff changes. Healers don't hang in a helicopter on top of the raid room to spot who has the smallest circle.

Raden is also kinda dumb, although a bit less. But giving a debuff that kills a person when they reach max hp combined with a lot of passive / smart heals means healers are often scared to use their most effective tools when the raid needs it the most. Ranged dps with this debuff can just move out of healing rains / lights of dawns / other smart heals range, but a melee cannot. Because of that our Raden kill was nearly a wipe from underhealing because healers were scared to heal the raid. This kinda stuff doesn't fit in the healing design we have, a lot of healing comes from essences, aoe heals, smart heals like for example healing tide or cloudburst, and so forth.

I'm sure encounter designers in Blizzard work in some vacuum without considering how classes work. Things like Blackwater behemoth and ground targeted spells for example.

[Kalisandra]

Resto mastery is useless in the games current state. Need to bring back big health pools and raise mana costs, I.e. Cataclysm.

Also heavy raid and tank damage that keeps coming but isn't too spikey, so you don't have to (and can't) heal it instantly, but do need to heal it constantly to keep up. That sort of healing means that the raid will get low and have to be healed all the way back up, and the Resto mastery will have its chance to shine.

[Monster Hunter]

Tbh resto druids suffer even worse from that syndrome, everyone seems to believe they're only good for m+ not raids even though I could see a few fights in Nyalotha where resto druid healing pattern would fit just fine.

And about "just pop cds and then dps" I swear both in my current guild and my previous guild that was the role of the disc priest. I mean a case where the priest heals fuck all, parses grey on hps, but as long as they press barrier and smite they get zero criticism from the raid leader and even protection from other people's criticism. Meanwhile all the other healers have to cover the missing hps.

I'm so sick and tired of this advice. I've been in 5 guilds since Legion started and ALL of them persecuted me one way or another for the class I play. I'm on the tank camp not healer, but it's the same story. I'm seriously on the verge of giving up because the "play what you want" proves time and time again to be just a sugar coated lie. And I'm not even counting the cases where the guild shut me down early in recruitment process because they were only interested in the most fotm class nothing else.

And yes, I've seen that happen to healers as well, as I said above mostly resto druids from BODA and on when everyone and their dog caught up to the "meta" of hpal + disc + maybe shaman if there's more room or we need link / ankh totem / speed totem / tremor.

Like seriously, how much energy and perseverance can a person muster until they give up and either reroll fotm or quit from mythic raiding / wow altogether.

It's becoming worse and worse with the widespread streaming of world top guilds raid progression everyone started to attempt to copy not only their strats, but also raid comps. It was nowhere near as bad 5-7 years ago and it feels it's getting progressively worse.

5 years ago blizz had the mantra of bring the player not the class.

That still the same for flex raiding like heroic.

For mythic raiding that got reversed back in legion (I think might have been wod) with dehemoginisation, now class's are more distinct in there strgth and weakness's what that means is that raid tiers will heavily favor certain comps based on there majority encounter design.

Yes you can still do mythic with an off meta raid comp but it does make it alot more difficult than back during the hemogonised days, and with titan forging gone it's actualy more difficult to farm till you can out gear the encounter to make an off meta comp work.

It's just part and parcel now, but it's not really blizzards fault, they went back on hemoginisation and bring the Player not the class based on our complaints so... Yea...

To mythic raid seriously, and I don't mean 3/12 "were mythic raiders lulz" players, you need to be able to flex, have alts and keep them decently geared enough that when an encounter really needs X class/spec some one can hop over and fill that need.

I mean it's the same story every raid tier and I bet alot of people have seen this scenario a few times.

Guild finishes heroic fairly quick, most of the raid are very good on there class and pulling good parses and ready for mythic,
Guild Hits up mythic, kills the first few boss's and then bam, hits a wall. Wipes and wipes and wipes every week till next tier or alot of the time breaks up as players get tierd or poached by other guilds more advanced In progress.
Guild and raid leaders are melts and can't understand why there stuck when most of them parse well, usualy make up some BS like you must double down on gearing mains, "get 3 more ranks on neck every one and we will down it" hahaha yea right.....
Problem is usualy simply the raid comp is massively in efficient for the fight. Yea each individual is geared enough to kill that boss, but the comp is missing certain class's blizz designed the fight to be easier if you take. But the leaders get more and more desperate, probly start picking in the green parsers or the blue parsers, blame gets tthrown around, guild gets toxic, and befor you know it your looking at a sting of xxxx left on wow progress, and you can bet your ass they will probly set up a new guild and build a new mix match raid team and hit the same exact problem a tier later.

[Marrilaife]

Problem is usualy simply the raid comp is massively in efficient for the fight. Yea each individual is geared enough to kill that boss, but the comp is missing certain class's blizz designed the fight to be easier if you take.

Nope, the problem isn't lack of x class unless it's demon hunter with its stupid mandatory buff, but dhs grow on trees so you'd always have one. The only problem in Nyalotha are fire mages and to some extent destro locks being broken OP with best gear setup, miles ahead of other specs.

With healing unfortunately holy palas still beat other healers because they're so versatile, shamans struggle with spot healing and spread healing, palas struggle with nothing.

If you want to de-homogenize classes you should ensure every spec has a niche, a strength and a weakness. Don't create busted specs like fire mage or hpal or havoc dh that become mandatory.

It wouldn't be a problem if you just needed to bring 1 person of x class like mage for Gul'dan. It's a problem when suddenly you want to bring 5 mages and every other guild around you wants 5 mages too. And the supply of mages just isn't there.

Basically the same happened with disc priests in BFA, until 8.3 nerfs they were busted when played well, now they got toned down but can still be pretty good. Problem is there's extremely small supply of players who can play disc well, majority of them suck at it and can just play holy at best. But guilds wanted disc priests and I'd say for every guild that had a good disc and didn't struggle you had 10 guilds without a disc or with a grey parsing one struggling with healing requirements.

The whole design of disc as a spec is toxic to healer balance, if disc is strong then other healer specs especially druids, monks, shamans and holy priests have problem finding a niche (because hpal will always have one due to beacon and spot healing capability), as the saying goes "better prevent than cure" which means damage reduction / absorbtion will always push hots and slower heals to the margin.

I'm not even sure if many healers enjoy disc because it's completely different playstyle than all other healers, but many are forced to play one because "guild needs a disc", this is basically as bad as playing shaman in vanilla and being only brought to plant totems - it's boring but someone has to do it and right now that someone is you, lol, have fun.