WotLK resto shaman gear doesn't make any sense?

[Stalker]

The original poster has a point. Considering on how new talents (especially Ancestral Awakening and Improved Water Shield) point towards crit, optimal itemisation would put Int, Sta, Spellpower, MP5 AND Crit on an item - considering that an item that has both MP5 and Crit is easier on the itemisation value than an item with only MP5 (=healing gear, according to the placeholder names) or crit (= Nuker gear).

For those who still don't know - the higher a single value, the more expensive it is on the item budget. So while an item "of Strength" has 50 strength, the same item with the suffix "of the Tiger" has 35 STR and 35 AGI (for a total of 70 stat points instead of 50).

If the itemisation stays this way, you have two choices - either go for Resto with "nuking" gear, focusing on crit instead of MP5 (and probably some haste rating too). And pray that Improved Water Shield will give you enough MP5 to keep on casting (though with the downranking nerf and potential potion sickness, this is far from a sure thing). Advantages are the - rather good - talents that benefit from crit rating. Disadvantages are potential mana problems if Imp. Water Shield (sort of Illumination "light") doesn't cut it.

Or go the traditional route and stack MP5. You might not run into mana problems that way... but you miss out on the more exciting new talents like Ancestral Awakening since you have like 20% crit rating unbuffed (considering buffs like Moonkin Aura going raidwide - otherwise more like 12%).

Personally, I prefer the first option, though it's just a gut feeling... however, the advantage that with crit gear, you can respecc to Elemental if a certain boss requires it sounds rather appealing.

[Alltat]

Ok still I have not seen any posts so far about us getting new CH ranks. They have every other spell but that one atm.

a) I'm sure you can find a blue post about it if you look.
b) It takes a complete lack of common sense to seriously believe we wouldn't get a new rank of CH.
c) CH is not the only spell that lacks proper new ranks.


As has been pointed out, there's plenty of potential healing gear around with crit on it. It's the pieces you'll be fighting against elemental shamans for. Since blues tend to have fewer stats than epics, it's a bit optimistic to think we'd be seeing a lot of sta+int+mp5+power+crit gear from normal instances.

[Morlow]

Why does every person on the planet think there aren't going to be new ranks of Chain Heal? Blizz has even stated that there will be.

[Nischi]

Although containing a lot of false information(as previously stated) there is a lot of good thinking in this thread. How will we heal, how will we regain our mana, should we try to get a lot of crit? will we get longer endurance during longer fights than now?

All of these are interesting questions, and any thinking you have and want to share is highly appreciated.

My thinking is that there should be a good mix of everything, although, if I could choose between an item of, say, spellhaste over crit rate, I would probably go for the crit rate. Maybe because I'm curious over how it will work out, but also I wan't to think it will work out somehow with the crit orientated talents we will have.

One thing is for sure Shaman friends, our healing will get a lot more interesting than now, more choices, higher ability to solo heal 5-man instances!

[Instant]

Yes that is true, it will be much more interesting, but we are not paladins.

Shaman with 40% crit and no mp5, has to cast HW and LHW only (and CH after three casts to keep up haste buff).

Anyway, there is nothing wrong if blizz want to give as an alternative, either crit based shaman healer, or mp5/crit/haste but in lower amount healer. But i still doubt it will be better, or even comparable to what other shamans will be. And if they really wanted us to be crit based, they wouldnt change Elemental Focus, which was way better than Imp. Water Shield.

Exact same situation as with Disc/holy priests NOW (not in wotlk). Disc priests can heal, but how many raid leaders prefer it over holy? (in pve ofc).

I to want to check how these new crit based talents will work, but i dont want HW and LHW being 80% of our healing, nor do i want CH to be 80%. 50/50 woudl be just about right :P

[Intwine]

The big problem here is not that the OP is able to write big chukns of critting test but he is thinking.

Just don't, stop doing it for gsake..

There will be new ranks on all the resto spells in LK (already confirmed by the dudes making WOTLK), there will be critgear, and mana regen gear, just go to the FP of this site and lookup the pvp gear from LK...

wait don't, ill do it for you...

http://static.mmo-champion.com/mmoc/...amanhealer.jpg
http://static.mmo-champion.com/mmoc/...hamannuker.jpg
http://static.mmo-champion.com/mmoc/...na_weapons.jpg


Ow, and don't come with the "one is healing and one is elemental" because i realy do know that.
But in LK, your spec and spells define what you are, thats the beauty of spellpower instead of +dmg and healing what we now got.

If you would like to go +crit with the watershield orbs talent and the +3 orbs glyph? you can do that by getting the +crit gear and the +LK Healer Crit shield (look it up on screenie number 3, left most collum, 3rd item).

If you want to go the mana regen way, get the manaregen gear and the manaregen shield (screenie 3 rightmost collum 1st item).

And yes, i do know its pvp gear, but the point is that the gear will come, just wait around for what is in store in about 3/4 months.

it's beta

[Shikaka]

Regardless of whether or not the gear looks more elemental based, the post above said it correctly, we are NOT paladins. We still need to value MP5. Especially since we will not be able to down-rank heals any longer. I personally do not like the watershield orbs being used by my crits, I just need to re-cast and waste a GCD. Fights in sunwell sometimes you just can't waste a GCD. I am definitely going to go in enhance and improve all my shields though

However, if blizzard is going to reduce the constant use of GCD like it was pre-BC. Tanks get hit harder but not as fast, then we could sacrifice the GCD and watershield would be able to be casted more often. Time will tell.

Don't know about you guys but if you are not constantly casting on a shaman you are doing something wrong :P

[Kduruh]

well i read enough to know that there will be new ranks of chain heal... thank god i'm not retarded... i don't need to take "you're an idiot" just because i had some misinformation a simple (there will be new ranks) would be enough without the flaming part, still i insisted in the crit thing because some of you missed the point and you still do. time for maths exam...

my guild is currently finishing BT though it's safe for me to say that i'm the best equiped healer on the guild.. i have 3 different "sets" that i use in different ocasions, i have a spell haste set with 20% spell haste and over 2100 healing bonus unbuffed and under 150 mp5 with water shield unbuffed. I use this set for fights that don't last for a long time or when i have a SP in my group. Also i have a healing power set on which i have 8% spell haste, almost 2300 healing bonus unbuffed and somewhere arround 170 mp5 with water shield i use it when there's a huge ammount of damage towards the people i'm healing, though (it's the set i use the less). I also have a mp5 set for really long fights mainly without a SP on which i have about 280 mp5, a litle over 2100 healing bonus and also 8% haste

ok now for the maths exam itself...

on my mp5 set i get about 330 mp5 full raid buffed (this is with the actual talents)
and now for the new talents, let's make it 150 mp5 raid buffeed + 40% crit (also keep in mind that with the new talents there will be a spell rotation, 1 chain heal, 3 lesser healing wave/ healing wave, and let's forget about the chain heal spamm for a moment) so.. i would be wasting average 600mana per each spell and i would be casting 4 spells so 2400 mana ok now let's multiply by 10 for a larger ammount, 40 spells, 24000 mana i would get 12 crits roughly so 2400 mana back just from critting alone and it would take (without any haste, and considering the new talents) average 10.8 seconds for 1 spell rotation so 108 for 10 spell rorations, less than 2minutes so mp5 would tike almost 22 times so i would get 2400 mana back + 22 x 150 = 3300, so 3300+2400 = 5600 mana back in that ammount of time, now let's go for the average 20% crit we have nowadays with about 250 mp5, so for the same ammount of time you would get 250*22 = 5500 + 1650 = 7150 mana, so mp5 now seems to be slightly better but keep in mind 2 things, the crit gear nowadays is for pvp gear which hardly has any mp5 and another thing... you would heal a lot less but considering you actually need mana to keep healing let's take that one out.

Still, the fact doesn't change that if we would be talking about pve gear.. we would probably get some more mp5 with that same ammount of crit so the in terms of mana it would be about the same, there's 1 small diference, each time you crit you get an extra heal for 60% of that ammount, also if you're critting you're healing a lot more than a normal heal

And again... i realised there will be new ranks for chain heal but truely... if all a resto shaman does is spamm chain heal... then he is truely a bad resto shaman... it depends a lot on the ocasion... a lot it's actually better to single target heal than just spamm depends a lot on the other healers on the raid also so really, that "spell rotation" they're implementing is actually nice because unless you're a bot... you actually cast other spell as much as chain heal or more other than a few ocasions were spamming really is the key but the rotation actually gives you one oner benifit, while with chain healing you can only heal people close to each other, with the new talents when you crit you can be healing 2 diferent people with say... 40 yards in between them so... once again... it's good because spaming chain heal or not.. you're always making good raid heal all over the place so yeah... 2 talents alone are crit based but those 2 talents aren't "JUST" 2 talents... they're some of the best talents we have and yes crit will be a good stat to bet on, it will give you about the same in mp5 as mana but you will heal more, similar to karazhan/t4 paladin items where you get crit with mp5 also if i recall

now back to the itemization and the beta issue...

yeah yeah... i know it's still a beta and yes... i know that they're the early items, i'm just saying... crit will probably be a stat as important for shamans as it is for paldins though... while paladin gear has a lot of crit, shaman gear has ---> NONE <--- whatsoever even for early items it would make a lot of sense for some to have at least some crit.

NOW... one final thing, why do you people have to start flaming? this is a forum a place for discussion and when i mean discussion i mean talking not hitting each other so.... if we're just talking why the hell do i have to get people saying "you're an idiot" and whatnot? do you find it offensive for me not to know all the information released so far? really... if you're that stressed out... well, i won't even go there... enough with the flaming...

[Szeraax]

In reply to Kduruh:

Being a beta tester also, i have noticed the exact same thing (No duh!). And I do very much agree with what you've said here. also, it think it sucks that Blizz said they want us to share more gear with ele, since no one else has used their same gear in the past (Mail items. I'm excluding cloaks,rings,and neck for this). Now after hearing that, i was VERY excited since my shammy build is a light duty hybrid that is generally dps, but i bring my power as being able to save almost any situation in an H (700 +dmg\1200 +heals (~30% crit unbuffed)). So, being one that loves to have awesome utility, i thought that this change would let me really really shine.

Sadly, i noticed that indeed, you either choose +crit or +mp5.

Of course there are gear levels and such, but its a big kick in the pants after about crying in happiness. <b>SO</b>, I have this theory. Blizz wants to let us choose how we gear up. whether we just on the +crit bandwagon, or just load out for mp5, its up to us. I will def be going +crit in my hybrid build, but i think ima mix them for my resto set.

[Shikaka]

Sadly, i noticed that indeed, you either choose +crit or +mp5.

Just like in the burning crusade. Items get additional stats based on item value.
Tier 6 to Tier 6.5. You get amazing +healing, amazing mp5, and you gain free crit/haste.
The dungeon blues might not look good for resto shamans due to lack of crit and mp5 together, however items will scale depending on where you are in end-game content. Put it this way, once we get to clear new 25 mans and you pickup a full set of the new tier, you will be amazing. Plenty of crit, plenty of mp5.

BT//HJ Tier 6 = mp5+healing.

SP Tier 6 = mp5+healing+haste+crit.

Blizzard basically will make the crit come with time I think. As you can maximize this crit "set" by getting a lot of pvp gear I just don't see it being viable having to rely on crits to return your mana......we are not paladins we will never have 40% crit, and even then the mana return paladins get back from illumination from FoL is > than what we would get back from water shield proc from using a LHW. Mp5 will still be king. Always has been, always will be.

Just my predictions. -Shik

[Kduruh]

I have another theory... maybe blizz wants shamans to have different functions and diferent gamplays even if with the same spec, for example while one shaman gears up with some haste and plays a bit like nowadays, spamms a lot of chain heal, another one gears up a lot for crit and heals all arround so, the one with mp5 gear or haste gear would be chain healing one "location" the other one would be healing all arround with single target heals that eventually heal people somewhere else though... a shaman gearing up for crit seems more likely, the whole spec guides you towards that, because of not only the crit oriented talents but the spell rotation itslef, it seems to me that the main concern of resto shamans will be healing melees even more than now oh and the MT so, spirit link the MT, chain heal to get extra casting speed and 3 heals on the MT, as the others are taking damage you heal them back up when the next chain heal comes, also you'll be leaving earthliving hot all arround, it seems really fun but in all honesty i think crit will be the key, i'm not saying you should just ignore mp5 or even haste wich will be much less relevant, but it really seems to me that for resto, crit will be the main stat.

[Kduruh]

sorry to be replying just after posted, i agree with you shik in some ways, i agree that the stats will come, i never said that, i just said that it's odd that not even 1 item for resto shamans have it yet, and about the 40% crit, i'm not theorizing you will be able to get it... i've been searching for gear and whatnot and it will be possible, mace from kaz'rogal, ring from naj'entus, shield from supremus, neck from mother shahraz and well if you bother to go back and get another ring from morogrim, together with S3/S4 you will be able to get 40% crit with healing spells and up to 2200 healing bonus buffed, (this is before sunwell)

about getting mana back... well as i said... it's not from crit only if you get some mp5 and a lot of crit, you'll get about the same mana back but heal a lot more.

oh and that reminds me... i have a question. anyone knows if there will also be new ranks for water shield? 200mana per charge is quite good now but yeah... at lvl 80 it won't be that much

[Shikaka]

I was looking into it and they probably will add a new rank, but I can't find anywhere where it is posted, because yeah level 69 is last rank as of right now.

And you're idea for crit actually isn't bad at all Kduruh, my guild has most of sunwell on farm so that's why I am not worried about my crit//regen etc. You also have to take into consideration though crit diminishes with leveling up due to the previous patches. It will take a lot more crit rating at level 80 than level 70 to hit around 40%.

As it stands I am sitting unbuffed at 2503 +healing, 226 mp5 with water shield, 178 spell haste, and 16% spell crit (5% from talents don't register on character sheet).

If the new content patch does go live soon, I will definitely be switching gear around a little, probably reduce haste and increase spell crit. Maybe I'll even take out the 2 haste gems I have and replace them with 10 spell crit. =D

Edit: I did some math and when the new content patch goes live 2/2 Blessing of the eternal's will give 4% crit and 5/5 Ancestral Knowledge will give 10% increase Intellect. 10% increased Intellect will only give us approximately 1.2% more crit. However then again 5/5 Ancestral Knowledge will buff my healing by 88.....

Ahhhhhhhhhh too many choices! Naturally once we can level to 80 It will make my life easier :P But with only have 61 talent points when the new content patch comes out I am contemplating skipping out on some restoration points like improved ankh, healing grace, etc. Just so I can get 5/5 Ancestral Knowledge for 1.2% crit and 88+healing....then again I really do not need 2600+healing unbuffed.......hehe.

When new content patch comes out I will most likely do this spec:
http://talent.mmo-champion.com/?sham...00000000000000

[Sard]

Couldn't you, ya know, use a balance of crit and mp5? Crazy I know! Imagine having bags full of a variety of caster mail and swapping stuff in and out based on the fight type (long fight where you need mp5? short, bursty fight where crit will be more valuable?). As people have mentioned, several good things do happen when you crit.

[Kduruh]

yes, i'm thinking of in geral gear will have mp5 and crit, and depending on the fights you can make little changes, i agree at 100% about the talents... i'm thiking of using;

For level 70:

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

For level 80:

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

There are some talents that i'm unsure of, for example... there will be some threat changes and well... the only problem about threat usually is mostly at the beggining of a fight and usually on trash... but i don't know how good of an idea it is to skip it or not because you also get some "resist" to dispells also... reduced silence effects, well this is another one... in terms of PVE there's only a few ocasions where it's usefull and usually not a must since if you have druids and whatnot, the hots will be enough but so far, those are the builds i'm aiming for, so far and yes... for now, i pretend to be with 40% crit raid buffed about 2300 healing bonus raid buffed and about 200 mp5 raid buffed also and about 5% spell haste, should be really good mana regen and really good healing, about the haste.. well wrath of air totem will give you 5% haste and my guess is that you won't spamm chain heal as much so... i think haste will be a lot less relevant. (those are the stats i'm aiming for with pre-sunwell gear)

[Instant]

Hey, sorry for being so aggressive before... I really like general idea for shaman using crit more. I myself love crits, and AA idea, our crits will heal most of all classes thanks to bonus AA 60%

And i agree that HW and LHW crits can sometimes be better than CH. With current gear i crit around 9k with healing way, that would mean (with AA and new glyph) 5.4 k on another target, and 1.8 on me, it's way more than full crit CH.

I'm also not saying that MP5 is most important shaman stat. On my gear atm i have 2.1 k healing, 256 haste, and 187 mp5 with water shield, and it's enough for everything i've been up so far (im alchemist, that's not afraid of using mana pot :P and im on RoS atm). I'd actually like to see more crit, although i still like haste better.

Anyway, i will try crit based healing myself, just for pure fun, and i agree that if shaman cast CH only its bad shaman, but that heavily depends on gear he has, and other healers in raid.

As for your talent build on 80 i definitely wouldnt put points in Healing Grace, its not needed now, and i dont think it will be needed later, especially since all tanks got AoE abilites. I also LOVE nature's guardian, cant really go w/o it so my points will go for that aswell as 2 points from Tidal Focus i think, this talents is crappy... when compared to other classes talents of the type.

But what id like most, is that Restorative Totems are 3 (or even 2) points only... its almost WORST talent ever. 5 points for like 12.5 mp5 and 30 healing per 2 seconds. If it wasnt linked to mana tide no resto shaman would ever picked, fact that we have to spent 5 points is... wrong, really really wrong.

[Kduruh]

well i've been doing some math, last night when i went to bed i started remembering some stuff about the buff changes and this morning when i wake up, there it is, all the buff chages

We'll get 5% crit in raid from moonkin aura or elemental oath + 9% crit in talents only, you also have the choice not to use earthliving weapon and use flametongue instead which will give you some more spellpower and therefore healing bonus, also with a glyph you'll have 2% spell crit from flametongue so that's 16% crit from active crit buffs, + your intellect and intellect buffs, i myself am at 322 haste normally which is 20% spell haste, i'm thinking of lowering it down to 15% and increasing spellcrit a bit so i'll be at something like 33 or 35% spell crit with 20% haste (with wrath of air totem active) and about 200 mp5 unbuffed and i'd sai 2100-2200 healing bonus unbuffed (only the crit part was raid buffed) so... your chain heal will be at 2.0 casting time, and with the tidal waves talent proccing your healing wave will be litle over 1.0 seconds cast, being 1.0 the minimum global cooldown possible, it'll be nice so.. raid buffed i'll be arround 2300-2400 healing bonus, 33% spell crit with litle over 1second healing wave critting up to 8k and healing a secondary target for over 5k, also, each spell rotation (1 chain heal + 3 healing waves) you'll actually cast 6 spells in a way, 3 targets from chain heal and 3 more healing waves so, 6 spells with a 30% spell crit = 2 crits average so you'll have 1 charge remaining from water shield, remember this isn't as simple as that but it's just math right now, so each spell rotation you'll add 1 extra cast of water shield so you actually never lose the 50mp5 buff totally and you'll be getting 406-408 mana back. Again, this is without any sunwell loot, I myself am at illidary council so i'm not even thinking of any loot higher than that.

If you really are in sunwell i think you could probably maintain most of the stats but get 200 or 300 more healing bonus and a bit more mp5 also so, still, it seems like really nice and fun to play with that talent spec.

[Instant]

Now when water shield is base 400 mana it can really work... With improved shields it will be 460 mana. Not sure how much mana will LHW cost, but it shouldnt be much more than that.

[Instant]

Just do arenas and get pvp gear. PVP gear gives crit and use that to blow through PVE.

Done deal. So what if 5/5 pieces of your gear comes from PVP? Still need weapons rings trinkets wrists and shields etc. Raid gear will always top that.

When I step into a raid half the raiders have pvp gear they use for trash and then swap everything for bosses. Makes sense since you don't want to be min/maxed for dps / heals for trash you want to survive and keep a steady pace going.

I really dont understand idea of changing gear for trash... Arent tanks supposed to keep aggro? Why would a dps nerf his dmg, for survivabilty, doesnt he trust his healer? And what will pvp gear do to your dmg mitigation aside from making you uncrit. You will still be one or two shotted. But you're killing trash a lot slower, and you progress trough raid much slower.

Also pvp gear has Resilience, and because of that it sucks for generally everything else than PvP. It doesnt have as much crit/spellpower as pve items with crit/spellpower only.

Ill link you two items for comparison
http://www.wowhead.com/?item=35048
http://www.wowhead.com/?item=32592
And here is pve piece with similiar ilvl to brutal chest : http://www.wowhead.com/?item=34396

Pvp piece has WAY HIGHER ilvl, still when compared to Relentless chest it sucks. Of course it has 3 more sockets, and mp5 etc etc... but it wont ever be good in end game pve.

Pvp pieces only works for lowest raids in game, nothing else.

[fiffer86]

I don't think i fully understand. It seems to me that your complaining about something in WOTLK, that isn't even in BC. From what I understand your saying BC gear is based on crit... yet it is not...

T4 set= not a single piece with crit
T5 set= 3 out of 5 have +crit
T6 set= 2 out of 8 have +crit

So if blizzard follows the same model, there will be no +crit in T7, T8 will be somewhat heavy on +crit, and T9 will go back to just +healing.

And many people said before... this is Beta, don't worry about it, if it ends up being broken it can be fixed.

Pretty much what your assuming is that Blizzard in WOTLK is going to make a healing class worthless in WOTLK... that's just silly if you think about it.