1. #1
    Deleted

    5.4 Resto Shaman vs Resto Druid

    Heya! With the next tier rapidly approaching I've decided that if I want to reroll i'd best get it underway. Just for clarification, I'm raiding in a 10 man at around world rank 500 with the tier cleared if that affects how you'd respond to the thread. Our guilds healing setup is disc / monk / rdruid (me)

    Currently i play restoration druid, I'm getting a little bored of the playstyle and do enjoy my resto shaman. As far as I know, resto shamans are a pretty high skillcap healer, probably the highest of them all atm. I also know their throughput when not spread or on the move is pretty dire, however looking at the changes coming up especially in regards to chain heal and healing tide, shamans are looking set to be pretty damn strong, mainly for the CDs and utility they provide.

    Really all I'm looking for is some advice, people who've tried out the PTR changes or who've done the maths, is a reroll to rshaman for a 10m viable?

  2. #2
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    They are changing the chain heal glyph to a 2sec cooldown and removing the healing reduction per bounce which is like 100% buff or more (cba maths). Also they are adding that stupid op talent in the spot of healing tide. Yes they are looking pretty damn strong.

  3. #3
    Quote Originally Posted by Frontier1 View Post
    They are changing the chain heal glyph to a 2sec cooldown and removing the healing reduction per bounce which is like 100% buff or more (cba maths). Also they are adding that stupid op talent in the spot of healing tide. Yes they are looking pretty damn strong.
    They aren't really a high skill cap, playing a shaman is fairly easy. The skill comes from being very reactive in your healing and knowing when+what to start casting right before damage comes out since you have to time your heals more than other classes.

    Also spread healing now is quite a joke and always has been. The difference is now our numbers are getting moved up so we don't look so bad. The glyph of chaining has always been our mainstay for this and with 2s cd your rotation has pretty much become, rip ch hst ch rip ch afk ch, in a spread heal environment.

    the talent replacing htt is very strong and will make hst have more throughput than HS with tot 2 piece. furthermore AG is not to be overlooked as well as it is (always has been) a very strong raid healing cd. Furthermore the new 4 piece from SoO now includes CH and works with the glyph. I did some testing and stacking AScendance + AG + SWG puts out a staggering amount of healing (need to drink in the middle of heroic megara rampage mr paladin take your time). Of course you can spread them as well for fights that are all about burst healing with little in between (like megara). To be honest with the 4 piece this will be a lot of overhealing since they are so very powerful.

    Either way i think shamans will be more viable than druids just due to the number of cooldowns. As a matter of fact i took the spot of a resto druid in my progression guild since shaman cds are powerful even now. I think overall the druid outhealed me but with a shaman we were able to 1 shot heroic megara (my first time seeing it) and we also got heroic durumu down in about 25 attemps all in the same week. Since everything is starting to shit to a mild healing + burst damage type mechanic and resto shamans are being buffed overall, i can easily see a reroll to shaman.

    Disclamer: If you like playing your druid, PLAY YOUR DRUID. If everything was about numbers and being viable there wouldn't be any resto shamans left by now raiding to hear all the good news.

  4. #4
    Herald of the Titans Irisel's Avatar
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    I agree with "play what you like." I love both classes, but my Druid has always been my alt. I really think, with the big changes to Shaman, they can stop being considered unviable in 10 man progression. Chain Heal buff (plus glyph buff), RS, and HTT baseline, I'm going to be one happy Resto Shaman.
    Last edited by Irisel; 2013-07-29 at 07:39 PM.

    Rule of Thumb: If the healer's HPS is higher than your DPS, you're doing it wrong.

  5. #5
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    Quote Originally Posted by shammypie View Post
    Also spread healing now is quite a joke and always has been. The difference is now our numbers are getting moved up so we don't look so bad. The glyph of chaining has always been our mainstay for this and with 2s cd your rotation has pretty much become, rip ch hst ch rip ch afk ch, in a spread heal environment.
    How exactly are you doing that with a 2 second cd? At the 30% HR haste breakpoint, your riptide has a 1.15s cast time. With riptide's HoT being usually around 66% overheal, you are probably better off keeping RT unglyphed and casting healing surge's while both CH and RT are on cd.

  6. #6
    Quote Originally Posted by -swift View Post
    How exactly are you doing that with a 2 second cd? At the 30% HR haste breakpoint, your riptide has a 1.15s cast time. With riptide's HoT being usually around 66% overheal, you are probably better off keeping RT unglyphed and casting healing surge's while both CH and RT are on cd.
    Healing Surges being cast that often are not going to be mana neutral. However, on the vast majority of fights, you are not standing still turret healing; you have to move. You can just use the ~0.5 second gaps to get necessary movement in. Chances are if you are standing still for 10+ second windows, the fight has enough people stacking that you would want to unglyph Chain Heal anyway.

  7. #7
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    Well with 5.4 resto shamans potentially have two healing cooldowns on a 2 minute timer (SWG with 4P and AG) and three on a three minute timer (Ascendance, SLT and HTT) meaning over a 6 minute fight they can potentially provide 12 cooldowns, roughly one every 30s. I guess this is why I feel they will be so strong, in case of another Wind lord rain of blades style thing, and now that the spread healing is pretty much fixed I assume the only issue with rshamans may be mobility?

  8. #8
    I wouldn't say spread healing is fixed. We actually have about half of our healing toolkit usable for spread healing now, maybe a bit more, but we're certainly not going to shine there. Not that that's a horrible thing. If we perform how we're supposed to in our niche, then all I want is to not be limited to 3 spells during spread phases, which was the case in 5.3. Spread healing certainly isn't going to be our forte, still, though.

  9. #9
    Deleted
    Quote Originally Posted by Tiberria View Post
    Healing Surges being cast that often are not going to be mana neutral. However, on the vast majority of fights, you are not standing still turret healing; you have to move. You can just use the ~0.5 second gaps to get necessary movement in. Chances are if you are standing still for 10+ second windows, the fight has enough people stacking that you would want to unglyph Chain Heal anyway.
    That's if the gap magically aligns with the movement requirements of the fight. It's still a 0.85s gap (or close to a full second if you're going for the third HR breakpoint), so I don't see how you can afford not casting anything for 20-25% of the fight. I'll admit I haven't tried it myself on the PTR, but the numbers are pretty clear. If you glyph chaining, you need to cast 2 spells inbetween every CH.

  10. #10
    stay druid IMO, it seems that blizz has much love for you guys atm

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