[WotLK] Resto shaman spec and talent discussion

[Romalus]

Most of us that are in end game raiding use the same 8/0/53 resto spec to negate as much AoE damage as possible, in the upcoming expansion with new talents such as Spirit Link, Ancestral Awakening, and Earthliving Weapon, new specs and ways to play (Less spamming 3 ranks of chain heal) will become viable.

Now that we've got confirmation that shaman WILL be getting new ranks of Chain Heal (Posted on the WotLK shaman beta forums by Koraa).
http://forums.worldofwarcraft.com/th...63279&sid=2000

It's safe to begin making specs based on the assumption that we will primarily remain raid healers in the end game.

I sat down and took the old cookie cutter spec (8/0/53) and simply filled in talents where necessary on the resto side of it. Assuming that at least one, if not more dungeons will be set around frost type raid damage, Elemental Warding will remain worth the 8 points in the elemental tree.
http://www.mmo-champion.com/talent/?...00000000000000
Obviously very similar to the current raid spec.

Something that caught my eye in the enhancement tree was the Improved Shields talent which looks extremely beneficial to a resto shaman (15% more healing from ES and 15% more mana from WS) depending on whether this includes the passive Mp/5 and how effective Imp Water Shield is in the resto tree. Something like 0/8/63, incorporating both talents, might be able to do amazing things for shaman mana efficiency.
http://www.mmo-champion.com/talent/?...00000000000000

I'm very interested to hear what the shaman community has come up with on this. Here's hoping our talent trees don't get messed with too much

[Soulssong]

I'm not in the beta, but just looking at the talents I've came up with this spec:

http://www.mmo-champion.com/talent/?...00000000000000

The only thing I really changed with the OP's talent was taken three points away from Nature's Guardian and put it into Healing Grace for the threat reduction of the spells. I've played around with Nature's Guardian for a little bit on my resto shammy beforehand and I never really cared for it, seemed to be more of a pvp talent to me. However, with how they're redoing threat mechanics in the new expansion, the reduced threat talent may be worthless as well. I guess we'll just have to see when I either get to the Beta or the expansion is released

[metalgemini]

I have never been saved in a raid by Nature's Guardian, so I don't plan on taking it in WotLK. I will play around with the same build Soulssong posted and this one:
http://www.mmo-champion.com/talent/?...00000000000000

Since flametongue totem gives a flat 73 spellpower boost, I expect to be dropping it every fight. +15% = 84 spellpower for those in range. 11 spellpower vs. +armor for the tank? Think we'll have to play around and see which works out better.

[Guran]

http://wotlk.wowhead.com/?talent=hZ0x0hZxceuVe0EkrIRx
my probable build.
I might have to wait and see how Nature's Guardian vs Healing Grace, NS & SL goes, but with the increased threat tanks will probably see Healing Grace is not gonna be as needed imo, Spirit Link will break too fast as any boss can hit for 30% of a tank's health. The only thing I might miss is NS, but if you can convince your RL to bring a Holy Priest that'll be solved as well :P

[Naargaar]

It's safe to begin making specs based on the assumption that we will primarily remain raid healers in the end game.

Not sure about that, Druids, and Pallies get AoE heals, CoH looks like it will not get the 6 second cool down. Also I am sure Blizzard made a statement when they took the 6 second cool down off CoH that they were concerned by the dominance of CoH and Chain Heal in Raids.

Far too early to guess what will happen, and I think you will need to play around with them all before we get there.

Oh and I would never be without Natures Guardian, I KNOW it has saved me on many occasions.

[Instant]

Spirit Link will break too soon?

If tank has 20 k hp, and takes 10 k hit, it's mitigated to 5 k hp. 5 k is 25% from 20 k, so it wont break.

Unless 30% is before mitigation (meaning 10 k), but then this spell is totaly useless in pve.

[nothingman]

Right now I'm looking at something like this:

http://wotlk.wowhead.com/?talent=hZ0x0hZxceuAeoxkrIRt

I'm extremely focused on PvE raiding only.

Couple thoughts:

-With a Ele Shaman and a Enhance Shaman in every raid I don't see the point of Enhancing Totems since it's likely those totems will be raid-wide buffs. It's possible they won't be, but for a 25-man raiding perspective I'll leave them out. Useful for 5/10 man based on group makeup.

-I like Natures Guardian, but I just can't find the points to fit it in. I know people swear by it, but in current raiding setups you can usually avoid damage, or pop a potion, or one of the 3 variety of HS that are available, or just heal yourself. I realize in WotLK you can't chain chug pots so it may be more important, but for right now I find I can live without it.

-Possibly removing Healing Grace depending on how much innate threat reduction Shaman get "baked in". They're changing threat mechanics a lot so it's hard to tell how necessary Healing Grace will be. Also possible that based on enchants/inscriptions that you could make up enough threat reduction with gear.

-I'm torn on Healing Way. I can see us develop a nice cycle of CH -> LHW/HW -> LHW/HW based off of Tidal Waves, but whether we're using LHW or HW will depend on the next ranks of the spell and situation. If you find that HW is equally efficient and used regularly then Healing Way would be useful, although you might see less Resto Shaman in raids (based on the rumors that 25-man raids would require only 5 healers and balancing other healing classes in endgame) so you might not get much overlap. I'm not in love with Healing Way until I see it in action.

-I can't leave Nature's Swiftness out. It's saved tanks (and consequentially raids) too many times to leave out.

-I can't see leaving out Ancestral Healing given the fact that our gear is going to have more +crit on it due to homogenization and given the fact that we have some abilities that key off crits. It's a really nice buff and if your crit rate is high enough it should have good uptime.

Some things I'd like to see (and I haven't really looked at other classes, so no guarantees they wouldn't make us crazy overpowered although I'm trying to be at least semi-realistic here):

-Remove some of the bloat in the early resto tree. Some ways you could do this would include increasing the default totem range so Totemic Mastery is no longer needed, change or remove Healing Grace depending on how the new threat mechanics work (if it's still useful/necessary merge it with Totemic Mastery somehow?), or change Restorative Totems and/or Tidal Mastery so they have the same effect but for only 2 or 3 points.

-Move Elemental Focus up a level in the Ele tree (never mind...no longer viable since it doesn't proc off LHW and HW. Lots of discussion about why this talent would have been fun in a healing cycle removed since I was unaware that they removed the ability for Clearcasting to proc based off of LHW and HW in the most recent beta).

[nothingman]

Spirit Link will break too soon?

If tank has 20 k hp, and takes 10 k hit, it's mitigated to 5 k hp. 5 k is 25% from 20 k, so it wont break.

Unless 30% is before mitigation (meaning 10 k), but then this spell is totaly useless in pve.

Reduced BELOW 20%, not BY 20%.

Your tank has 20k HP. He takes a 10K hit, so 5K for the tank and 2.5K for each link.

Unless the tank or the two shields drop under 20% of their total health (i.e. under 4K for the tank with 20k health in your scenario) it won't break.

[Prefix]

Right now I'm looking at something like this:

http://wotlk.wowhead.com/?talent=hZ0x0hZxceuAeoxkrIRt

I'm extremely focused on PvE raiding only.

*snip*

I agree with pretty much everything you just said, from a raiding standpoint myself.
Except for one thing.

Why would you go for Elemental Focus? How often do you use damage spells as a restoration shaman?

[nothingman]

I agree with pretty much everything you just said, from a raiding standpoint myself.
Except for one thing.

Why would you go for Elemental Focus? How often do you use damage spells as a restoration shaman?

Did they remove the ability for Elemental Focus to trigger off of LHW and HW crits? At one point in Alpha Elemental Focus was able to trigger off of LHW and HW crits.

So those crits would reduce the cost of your next healing or damage spell (probably a CH) by 40%.

I just checked the latest talent calc and LHW and HW are conspicuously missing from the list of spells that can trigger Elemental Focus. If that's the case it's worthless and can be completely disregarded for a resto Shaman and clearly the best early-tree talents to combine for Resto will be Enhancement. If that's the case I apologize - apparently they made a chance since the last version of the alpha that I missed.

[nothingman]

http://forums.wow-europe.com/thread....14310456&sid=1

Yep. They did remove it, and I missed it.

Disregard everything I said about Elemental Focus. My mistake.

[Prefix]

I figured you missed the removal.
But again, if it hadn't been changed, I completely agree and I made a build around it.

[nothingman]

I figured you missed the removal.
But again, if it hadn't been changed, I completely agree and I made a build around it.

It's a shame, actually. It was probably too high in the Ele tree to make useful, but it sure would have been fun to try to get enough crit so that your CH -> LHW -> LHW cycle would crit enough on the LHW spells so that you could consistently reduce the cost of the next CH and keep the cycle going.

Would have been fun to try, although in some ways it makes it a lot easier to decide where to spend the points you're not putting into Resto. There are some great low-level Enhancement talents to combine into Resto builds.

Thanks for pointing out the change. Don't know how I missed it.

[Inoue]

I actually think elemental focus did procc from healing spells for a while, but they removed it again.

[Prefix]

I actually think elemental focus did procc from healing spells for a while, but they removed it again.

Like we said previously, it did in Alpha.

[Inoue]

Yeah, I didn't refresh the page for a while, noticed that a lot of people already wrote it :P

[Guran]

Spirit Link will break too soon?

If tank has 20 k hp, and takes 10 k hit, it's mitigated to 5 k hp. 5 k is 25% from 20 k, so it wont break.

Unless 30% is before mitigation (meaning 10 k), but then this spell is totaly useless in pve.

Yeah, if it's 30% after distribution I guess it would be useful.
Especially for rage generation for prot wars & mana for tankadins OTing.