1. #1

    A way to address resto shaman in shadowlands (and shaman as a whole by extention)

    I have been thinking about a way to provide feedback on the issue of shaman. While a bunch of changes towards elemental en enhancement have been very welcoming i believe restoration shamans are in a really awkward spot right now.

    So why are restoration shamans in a bad spot at the moment?

    They are only good for 1 aspect of PvE.

    The problem i see with resto shaman is the fact that they are only good/great at sustained AoE healing.

    Now, this is good for raiding. But here is the problem, every healing class is good at AoE healing. While we are not questioning a restoration shaman's toolkit for utility and even the spirit link totem these are not actually things that help shamans out here.

    For one the mastery of shaman simply does not translate well into the game. Partly because of the philosophy on how healing works as well as the encounter designs.

    Back in the old days damage is not as bursty and dangerous as they are now. We want to be at 100% at all times and be healed back up instantly. Shamans are not good at this. But every other class does have it. by means of either mitigation and/or healing.

    Lets take paladins for example. The reason they are so beloved in the current patch is the ability to use glimmer of light and they incredible spot healing to pretty much be favorable in all situations. Not to mention they got 2 mitigation abilities(1 is AoE that surpasses Spirit link totem) In the form of Devotion aura and Blessing of sacrifice.

    What we are ending up on is a mastery that does not translate well, shamans are lacking spot healing and a mitigation spell. There is a disconnect into how restoration shaman works now.

    Even mistweaver monks have a better mitigation ability called life cocoon and that's one of the lesser ones. Not to mention they can change into potent single target healers and excellent AoE healers. Mistweaver is in a great spot because of that. and their mastery does not hold them back either.

    What do i purpose to change and make it better?

    I think first order of business is redesigning Mastery while fitting into the shaman class identity.

    I purpose the following :

    Mastery: Enhancing waters. You increase the maximum health of 5% an ally you heal and increase the healing you do on that ally

    5% would be bare minimum. so here is my reasoning :

    Increasing the maximum health of an ally has always been something that has been a part of shaman for a long time. So why not make this mix into mastery? it happend with druid. so why not shaman?

    increasing healing would offset the extra hp an ally gets. Also we don't wanna make the maximum hp extra too crazy so the extra healing is there to offset that.

    This wouldn't break the meta that much, but it will do a lot more for restoration then increasing healing based on missing health because that will never be truly utilized due to the nature of WoW in it's current state. It would work on classic, not Shadowlands.

    Alright sir, anything else?

    Yes, but this will also translate into the whole shaman class.

    I purpose to make Ascendance a baseline cooldown. This cooldown is amazing i don't see why this wasn't the case in MoP when it was first introduced.

    The whole ability is making you turn into crazy elemental figure and it fits PERFECTLY with the shaman class. Why wouldn't you make this baseline?

    Not only that, this is a great cooldown for shamans to have to offset the single target issue they are having. Also the change to mastery to offset in dungeons where the shaman is healing alone.

    You can now get different talents into the talent tree and have rows compliment AoE or single target healing so we get choice on how we actually heal. Right now that's not really the case anymore because single target healing has been shamans biggest weakness for a long time because there hasn't been a good specbuild for restoration that can compete.

    ___

    Ok, these are some ideas i have for shaman. i hope this feedback will be seen, if anyone has thoughts or criticism please share them.

  2. #2
    Bloodsail Admiral kosajk's Avatar
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    tbh if they can keep the toolkit we have from neck atm there is no problem imo, neck essences give a loot flexibility to get some extra ST or AOE healing as needed, i can guarantee crit heal with healing surge 2x for ~150-200k (depending on target hp %) every couple sec, its more than enough to keep m+ 15 up with most affixes i get onto.
    Obviously question is how much off this flexibility will be kept in some form in shadowlands

    "Hope for the best and prepare for the worst"

  3. #3
    I actually think your mastery redesign is a pretty good idea, however I think it might be better suited to either also include armor, or only include armor and damage mitigation instead of maximum health. Maybe something like:

    Targets affected by your healing spells have 5-20% more armor, and 3-10% more HP for 10 seconds.

    Another interesting idea would be to have the mastery focused on their totems and make Restoration the true Totemic spec: Increases the potency of your water and fire totems by 45%-150% (Mana Tide, Healing Tide, Healing Stream, Searing Totem)

    Another idea I had was to focus the mastery on Earth Shield specifically. This way the shaman could specialize in single target healing if they wanted to go into a mastery focused build.

  4. #4
    I think they could bring back Resto’s old weapon enhancement as their Mastery.

    Mastery: Earthliving. Your healing is increased by #%, and has a chance to leave a Heal over time on the target that heals for # every 2 seconds for 10 seconds.

  5. #5
    Quote Originally Posted by Laqweeta View Post
    I think they could bring back Resto’s old weapon enhancement as their Mastery.

    Mastery: Earthliving. Your healing is increased by #%, and has a chance to leave a Heal over time on the target that heals for # every 2 seconds for 10 seconds.
    I’d rather that brought back the ancestral healing thing they used to do as mastery instead:

    “Your direct heals release an ancestral
    Spirit, healing X health to a damaged ally nearby.”

  6. #6
    Quote Originally Posted by kiramon View Post
    I’d rather that brought back the ancestral healing thing they used to do as mastery instead:

    “Your direct heals release an ancestral
    Spirit, healing X health to a damaged ally nearby.”
    +1 fits the shaman bill much better

  7. #7
    Imo they just need a tank cooldown, like a

    Harden Earth Shield, roots the friendly target in place however the target takes 30% damage until cancelled. Consumes All Earth shield stacks. Lasts 4 seconds.
    2 min cooldown

  8. #8
    Quote Originally Posted by kiramon View Post
    I’d rather that brought back the ancestral healing thing they used to do as mastery instead:

    “Your direct heals release an ancestral
    Spirit, healing X health to a damaged ally nearby.”
    No, if we lose our mastery then AA makes no sense. I mean, it won't bring anything more than mastery does.
    When my tank is low I'd rather crit for ~200k than critting for ~130k + ~40k AA proc.
    And losing our mastery will make us weaker in the aoe healing field, the only field we're good at right now. Mastery has never been a throughput stat for us, it has always been a progression stat (along of it being a mana saving stat in a way -more healing for same cost-).

    What we need is just for them to give us AA back. This is the only change we need and we're good to go. I've been crying (and another fellow rsham in my guild) for the return of AA since they took it away.
    Simply bringing back AA will make us more relevant in 5 man content and won't change our AOE healing throughput. Easy to do, won't fuck up anything.
    Last edited by Armagnac; 2020-04-24 at 03:00 PM.

  9. #9
    Quote Originally Posted by Armagnac View Post
    No, if we lose our mastery then AA makes no sense. I mean, it won't bring anything more than mastery does.
    When my tank is low I'd rather crit for ~200k than critting for ~130k + ~40k AA proc.
    And losing our mastery will make us weaker in the aoe healing field, the only field we're good at right now. Mastery has never been a throughput stat for us, it has always been a progression stat (along of it being a mana saving stat in a way -more healing for same cost-).

    What we need is just for them to give us AA back. This is the only change we need and we're good to go. I've been crying (and another fellow rsham in my guild) for the return of AA since they took it away.
    Simply bringing back AA will make us more relevant in 5 man content and won't change our AOE healing throughput. Easy to do, won't fuck up anything.
    This logic on our mastery was more valid when heals didn't get sniped left and right. Even on progression, our mastery is not very strong, as every other healer is pumping just as much. Gone are the days of say, dropping HTT and letting the other healers get some mana back while it tops off the group. Alternatively, you play with healers who are meh or you under heal, then mastery is decent. This is not a great design for a mastery, at least IMO.

    I'm not sure if any of the suggestions here are effectively better or worse. Honestly, maybe reworking our mastery into something like Well of Existence, pooling our overhealing, letting a certain amount be used up if you heal someone under a certain %, then give us Unleash life baseline, and make using that push out either all or 50% of the stored healing on the target, giving us control over an large, on demand ST heal.

  10. #10
    Bloodsail Admiral kosajk's Avatar
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    Quote Originally Posted by themaster24 View Post
    This logic on our mastery was more valid when heals didn't get sniped left and right. Even on progression, our mastery is not very strong, as every other healer is pumping just as much. Gone are the days of say, dropping HTT and letting the other healers get some mana back while it tops off the group. Alternatively, you play with healers who are meh or you under heal, then mastery is decent. This is not a great design for a mastery, at least IMO.

    I'm not sure if any of the suggestions here are effectively better or worse. Honestly, maybe reworking our mastery into something like Well of Existence, pooling our overhealing, letting a certain amount be used up if you heal someone under a certain %, then give us Unleash life baseline, and make using that push out either all or 50% of the stored healing on the target, giving us control over an large, on demand ST heal.
    tbh maybe there is something wrng with me but i find personally really hard to overheal enough to use that esence and i really find that mechanic awkward, having to overheal to charge some extra powerfull healing meh. It may work nice for some hoters but shaman with smart heals is not best user of this imho

    "Hope for the best and prepare for the worst"

  11. #11
    Quote Originally Posted by kosajk View Post
    tbh maybe there is something wrng with me but i find personally really hard to overheal enough to use that esence and i really find that mechanic awkward, having to overheal to charge some extra powerfull healing meh. It may work nice for some hoters but shaman with smart heals is not best user of this imho
    It was just an idea, and it definitely works better in a raid than in M+ (I prefer raid so that for sure is part of my thought process). Doing raid, I often have a considerable amount of overhealing. But ya, I could see it being a bad idea overall because it wouldn't be good as is. They could change it to a % of your total healing, but make it start at a really low %, say 5%, and then, if you stack mastery by the first raid tier, maybe it's 10-12%. End of Xpac you're looking at perhaps 25%.

    Honestly, I just want a resto shaman mastery revamp. Whether it's this or some other idea, I just want us to change.

  12. #12
    Bloodsail Admiral kosajk's Avatar
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    yea it could work if for example 30% of overheal would be stored for extra oh shit healing as you sugested and another 30% of overheal would be converted for shield (affected by mastery) that could be intresting mechanic :P although i think someone have this mechanic alredy so prabobly they will not give it to next class :P

    "Hope for the best and prepare for the worst"

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