Is Primordial Wave destined to be our ST healing CD?

[Nyel]

I always liked this ability, even in its former states. After trying beta, I must say it feels really good to play with it. Chain Harvest is another Chain Lightning / Chain Heal that is strong yet feels pointless, I haven't made up my mind about Fae Infusion as of now and Vesper Totem is very "fire and forget". For ST I find them all to be rather lacking.

Primordial Wave on the other hand is quite intricate because it has a lot of interaction with our talents and toolkit, especially the first talent row:

1. Torrent does benefit Primordial Wave because it buffs our Riptide (and Primordial Wave does apply Riptide to the target)

2. Undulation does benefit Primordial Wave as you can combine your empowered Healing Wave with the Primordial Wave buff to get some very high ST healing (and additional group healing)

3. Unleash Life is basically doing the same as 2.

But it doesn't stop there, in the second talent row it has synergies as well:

4. Echo of the Elements - the more Riptides you can spread, the more people your Primordial Wave'd Healing Wave does heal (god, why isn't Echo baseline yet)

5. For higher ST, you could use Deluge, that even buffs our single target healing capability due to the stronger Healing Wave on Riptide'd targets (which Primordial Wave does)

So every 45 seconds we can use a quite strong healing combo with Primordial Wave + Healing Wave that heals for about 35% of my HP (without Mastery). I know this needs setupt and isn't really a strong tank CD like Life Cocoon or Ironbark or whatever, but this might be the best we can get.

I already planned to go Necrolords with my Shaman before they removed the cast time for Primordial Wave, but right now it's like a safe bet for me, as it just feels good.

I really wish the other Covenant abilities would have as much interaction with talents as Primordial Wave and Resto Shaman has.

What are your thoughts on this topic?

[apelsinjuice]

healing wave and primordial wave nerfed

[music49]

keep in mind the stat buffs from different soul binds. depending on what stat becomes best for you. anything with vers or mastery you should really go with Pelegos, or night fae have haste. then if your spec is all about execute then the last soul bind for night fae is pretty much mandatory as of right now (currently in tuning according to blizzard)

What I'm saying is don't make a decision just yet. Even though the class ability might be the best out of 4, the soul binds may be stronger with a weaker class ability and if your going for performance there just isn't an answer yet. Mechanically most everything is done though so if your not pushing for absolute leetism. just go with what looks more fun

my pally is going kyrian cause Captain America

[Nyel]

I mean I already made up my mind for which class goes with which Covenant (Druid + Shaman Necrolords, Priest Venthyr, Paladin Kyrian, Monk Necrolord or Nightfae) and I really don’t care about min-maxing, because that isn’t my desired playstyle. I am not even looking for the best Covenant. I just wanted to discuss the complex interactions you can have with Primordial Wave and how it fits our toolkit very nicely, whereas the other skills really don’t.

[shammypie]

snip

PW isn't a single target healing cooldown. It also has 0 interaction with undulation. The cleaved heals don't get buffed, only CASTED healing waves. Furthermore they nerfed the ability recently, all the mirror HW only do 60% of a normal HW which was nerfed down to 300%. The only ST CD worth using is unleash life for quick healing.

on talents
it would be nice if echo was baseline but it's whatever. Deluge and Echo are looking to be equal in power and if your running M+ you probably will want deluge as the riptide legendary guaranties that you will have all 5 players covered with riptide and don't get any benefit from delaying a riptide for an extra HW proc. be nice if they made it baseline and actually balance talents instead of hitting us with the nerf bat.

all in all its the best raiding talent and slightly behind chain harvest for m+. Night fae is way behind and it got nerfed recently because people were 1 shotting in pvp with it. Kyrian remains the meh convenant that's meh for all meh activities.

[Unholyground]

I am going Necrolord on Enhancement Shaman, I decided I don't give 2 fucks about the balance of it.

[Nyel]

PW isn't a single target healing cooldown. It also has 0 interaction with undulation. The cleaved heals don't get buffed, only CASTED healing waves. Furthermore they nerfed the ability recently, all the mirror HW only do 60% of a normal HW which was nerfed down to 300%. The only ST CD worth using is unleash life for quick healing.

on talents
it would be nice if echo was baseline but it's whatever. Deluge and Echo are looking to be equal in power and if your running M+ you probably will want deluge as the riptide legendary guaranties that you will have all 5 players covered with riptide and don't get any benefit from delaying a riptide for an extra HW proc. be nice if they made it baseline and actually balance talents instead of hitting us with the nerf bat.

all in all its the best raiding talent and slightly behind chain harvest for m+. Night fae is way behind and it got nerfed recently because people were 1 shotting in pvp with it. Kyrian remains the meh convenant that's meh for all meh activities.

I just went into beta and tested this and you are right - or Primordial Wave is bugged at the moment. The second Healing Wave is healing for 100% instead of the 60% the tooltip says, that's why I thought Undulation would work with it.

I just thought it about as pumping out Primordial Wave + Healing Wave on a tank, which basically results in Primordial Wave healing + Riptide initial healing & HoT + Healing Wave + 60% Healing Wave. I mean it's not much, but it's still quite a nice combo to bring back a ST. The best that we've got, unfortunately.

[shammypie]

I just went into beta and tested this and you are right - or Primordial Wave is bugged at the moment. The second Healing Wave is healing for 100% instead of the 60% the tooltip says, that's why I thought Undulation would work with it.

I just thought it about as pumping out Primordial Wave + Healing Wave on a tank, which basically results in Primordial Wave healing + Riptide initial healing & HoT + Healing Wave + 60% Healing Wave. I mean it's not much, but it's still quite a nice combo to bring back a ST. The best that we've got, unfortunately.

the nerf hasn't been implemented yet. you can find the information by watching tiqqle on youtube has has a video covering all the recent changes. expect it to be lowered to 60% soon.

also it's not a bug as you read the tooltip it says undulation buffs CASTED healing waves that YOU cast. You technically aren't casting the mirrors so they don't count as the buff. though it's funny because the primal legendary counts both PW as a riptide and it's own application of riptide. So technically after the first proc you only need to cast 3 riptides and 1 of them can be PW.

finally we aren't single target healers. We're the kings of AOE. however they did put in some new tools to help us. Remember we will be able to have up to 3 potency conduits. There is an earth shield conduit that increases healing on Earth shield for 5% (min) to 12%(max)[rank scales with ilvl so expect 12% to be mythic level]. Deluge increases our healing by 20% on riptide/he targets which for 5 mans should be the whole party. You can take flash flood for quicker ST heals plus good old undulation. That's potentially 658% Hws and 762% HS (extra crit averaged in) or in terms of hps it's 376% and 726% ST healing. Granted that's with an undulation proc and TW. For non undulation its 250% and 484%.

[Nyel]

the nerf hasn't been implemented yet. you can find the information by watching tiqqle on youtube has has a video covering all the recent changes. expect it to be lowered to 60% soon.

also it's not a bug as you read the tooltip it says undulation buffs CASTED healing waves that YOU cast. You technically aren't casting the mirrors so they don't count as the buff. though it's funny because the primal legendary counts both PW as a riptide and it's own application of riptide. So technically after the first proc you only need to cast 3 riptides and 1 of them can be PW.

finally we aren't single target healers. We're the kings of AOE. however they did put in some new tools to help us. Remember we will be able to have up to 3 potency conduits. There is an earth shield conduit that increases healing on Earth shield for 5% (min) to 12%(max)[rank scales with ilvl so expect 12% to be mythic level]. Deluge increases our healing by 20% on riptide/he targets which for 5 mans should be the whole party. You can take flash flood for quicker ST heals plus good old undulation. That's potentially 658% Hws and 762% HS (extra crit averaged in) or in terms of hps it's 376% and 726% ST healing. Granted that's with an undulation proc and TW. For non undulation its 250% and 484%.

The tooltip already states 60%, but the healing is indeed 100%. Something‘s not right there. And I never said Undulation is buggy, I was talking about Primordial Wave.

[shammypie]

The tooltip already states 60%, but the healing is indeed 100%. Something‘s not right there. And I never said Undulation is buggy, I was talking about Primordial Wave.

so am I. Primordial wave is weird in that the the healing waves that are casted on the riptide targets aren't considered to be casted by the shaman. You still get your normal healing wave on the target that benefits from undulation. My point is that the mirrors don't count as being casted by you and thus don't receive the undulation buff. this is not a bug.

[Nyel]

so am I. Primordial wave is weird in that the the healing waves that are casted on the riptide targets aren't considered to be casted by the shaman. You still get your normal healing wave on the target that benefits from undulation. My point is that the mirrors don't count as being casted by you and thus don't receive the undulation buff. this is not a bug.

And nobody said that was a bug in the first place.

I said Primordial Wave is buggy because the tooltip states it only replicates 60% healing when it actually still replicates 100% healing. That's the bug (or false tooltip) I'm talking about.

[Nyel]

Earth Shield buff to 20% Yes! The new Surge of Earth is very powerful, too. The Earth Shield target will get healed with a Healing Wave and the other two will get healed with a Healing Surge kind of heal. On a 20s CD this could be our new ST emergency heal - it's not nearly as powerful as other classes strong CDs, but it's something.

I do have two problems with the ability though:

1. It's another ability that takes advantage of stacked group mates. We have plenty of them - Healing Rain, Downpour, Chain Heal and now Surge of Earth.

2. It's in the wrong talent row. Making me choose between Surge of Earth for a strong ST/stacked healing CD or Echo/Deluge is not good. I want to take Primordial Wave and in that case I'd most likely favor Echo/Deluge every single time. Surge of Earth should change places with... yeah, that's the question. Downpour or Cloudburst Totem, imho. Or even Flash Flood, but that would make the choice in the second talent row even harder.

What do you think about the new Surge of Earth?