Ive always hated two spells in the game. I hate Cloudburst totem on my shaman and I hate Roll the Bones on my rogue. So much so that I either play without them or stop playing those classes.
My question is since i didn’t really play shaman at all last xpac–Is playing cloudburst vital to resto game play?
it is , but you don’t have to stress about it especially playing lower difficulty dungeons and raiding . just cast it whenever is available
Nah. You don’t really need it. In fact it will make your performance worse if you don’t use it right so if you aren’t comfortable with it or learning it just choose HST with advanced water totems 
HST has very high numbers as it was buffed not a long time ago. You can use HST without being called a noob ;p;
Use HST I would say too, especially if you’re doing keys below 10. Cloudburst is really only needed if there is a lot of heavy healing and if you need to time a bursty aoe heal on the party. The passive ticks from HST are nice too and there are some new resistence buffs on the HST ticks in one of our re-designed talent nodes (I think).
In non LFR Raids Cloudburst is usually better as you’re always healing so it will build up enough healing and there will be enough ppl that even if it goes off naturally it will use up the stored HP most of the time without overhealing.
A lot of it will depend on the content you are doing, and when you hit 80 in TWW what hero spec you are playing. The totemic tree really props up HST healing and makes it very viable, especially in dungeon content. I haven’t done any raid testing so take my words with a grain of salt, but I am imagining Cloudburst will still be the way to go in raids.
bro cloudburst was never vital… and I advise you if you like a class learn to use it…