Another resto rant but it’s needed

Classes Shaman
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So if they are bringing back the flame and wind weapon imbues for enhance and Ele then why can’t they return Earthliving for resto instead of this CD in the talent tree? Healing on shaman now just feels soo weak compared to the other healing specs. As the OG healing class for the horde shamans should at least be handled with care… just saying…

I am sure others are happy with the way resto shaman are in BFA but they really need some love in Shadowlands! But if you want to talk about class fantasy then shouldn’t you need to add back earthliving weapon. You either appease all 3 specs or none at all! The way it worked in cataclysm was perfect! And I enjoyed every moment of it but you removed its original function because it was a useless ability with no justification of its use on our healing output.

Like I know I am not the only one that wants it back the way it used to be. Although this is just a rant I want to enjoy my shaman. All 3 specs! But I know it’s going to get thrown to the wind to blizzard because I am not one of the top streamers or elitist they cater to…

8 Likes
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Solid feedback all the way up to the end. Bunch of ppl on alpha are not streamers or elitist. If other ppl share yur interest I’m sure it has been passed on.

Having said that priest and shaman are the strongest healers on alpha right now but should be noted nothing is final.

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Thank you for replying but that’s to be expected. They are tuning abilities and I can tell you this much priest are going to dominate regardless of what expansion. Monks are going be strong from the looks of it and druids are getting more love than normal.

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I miss the proc sound it made, but other than that it really didn’t add anything. A random chance to proc an extra HoT on a target that’ll end up overhealing anyway? Why not just have our spells heal for more instead? Adding Earthliving back won’t fix any issues, and I’d rather be consistent than rely on procs to get the job done.

If Earthliving does come back I’d want it to come back in a different form and actually do something to spice up what we’ve been doing for almost 10 years. Just my 2¢

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Our throughput feels fine on alpha, I’d say our defensive capacity is what’s lacking. No more azerite to heal me in ghost wolf. Only thing I can say is I’d like to see grounding totem back and ghost wolf give damage reduction or healing (without a 4s counter to it).

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Totally agree, I really wish there was a main healer giving solid feedbacks about Shaman Resto on the Shadowlands Alpha Thread, but unfortunately most of the few feedbacks about Resto there are just scratching the surface, it’s almost frustrating.
I’ve already said it once, but… I really wish for a mastery rework on Shadowlands, it looks good on paper, but it’s not performing that good right now and also it’s not either fun or rewarding for the players, especially compared to other healer’s mastery.

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I heard someone explain why they thought the Mastery feels so bad and it made a lot of sense. It’s because it rewards you for healing poorly and punishes you for doing a good job. Every other healing mastery rewards you for playing a certain way proficiently. This one rewards you for screwing up or ignoring your duty until the last possible second. I gotta say, as I tank I get kinda panicky when the screen starts flashing red and start popping defensive cooldowns whenever a healer tries to take advantage of this mastery and lets me get really low before doing their job again.

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Totally, every other healer mastery gives you it’s healing buff as a reward for your direct actions, you as a player is kinda the proc trigger of it, and this actions is about getting better at some aspect and taking good decisions, I really really hope they will rework our mastery.

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I just hope the final product doesn’t do anything weird with shaman that turns them into garbo.

Like, chain heal and spirit link can only take me so far if all my other heals suck donkey.

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I don’t want to press buttons that are not chain heal. Chain heal is best heal.

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Yeah I miss the sound as well… I think they moved it to druids lifebloom. Not to mention if they gave it a flat healing buff then the other healing specs wouldn’t be balanced… or rather that’s the excuse they would use. Honestly I just want it back and possibly with a rework.

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I for one love keeping my raid or 5 man team topped up, it’s like an obsession. However, I play several healers and I’m pretty good at it, and I must disagree with

Granted if you don’t know your healers and such, I get the panicky feeling as a tank. But prioritizing low health targets is not “healing poorly”, and in fact will bring you down the list of overhealing that my druid likes to dominate lol.

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I think you’re misunderstanding me. My point is that if you are doing a really good job as a healer, then theoretically their health bars won’t be as low (compared to a bad healer) but you won’t get as rewarded for doing your job well with this mastery. If you are doing a bad job as a healer, and aren’t sequencing your spells optimally to take advantage of your passives like high tide, then you’re healing won’t be as strong BUT the mastery will actually reward you for playing sub optimally as it buffs your healing on lower health targets.

As for the Tank issue. We have another potential problem. Even if I know my healer is a Shaman and how they operate, how do I know when to pop my defensives? How do I disern when the healer is intentionally letting my health dip low for some deep wounds vs they’re actually struggling to keep my health up? With every other healer its easy to discern when the battle is actually going south and defensive cooldowns ate needed.

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Can confirm. This is how I heal every dungeon.
Every tank I have seems to freak out around 50%.

My favorite maneuver is the backpedal defensive.

Make sure the lock soulstones. That’s the best guess I have whether or not Healing Surge will land before or after the killing blow.
…
This is of course satire. Everything Voltorch calls out is extremely accurate, to the feelings, the rewards, the penalties… It may as well be the only healer which effectively REDUCES the maximum HP of all party members by ~15% (where I’m ready to actually heal someone). That said, if the mastery were removed, shaman would be literally unplayable with no way to recover unless EVERY healing ability was significantly buffed. It’s almost like the Shaman playstyle is to get behind so you can finally get caught back up (???).

I feel like shaman healing is the most punishing in dungeon groups - my groups finish, but I don’t think everyone else had a good time. Sometimes my heals are poorly timed (which causes some angst, that’s on me), though most often someone thinks they can stand in an avoidable mechanic and I’m going to be able to manage it… Or they’re not going to use their own defensive/recovery options.

Because of how Shaman works, I need to hit it and move to the next player. As long as any player sits below 85%, no other player will get any healing unless EVERY player is below 95% and I can bounce a Chain Heal (having 2+ ranged DPS means it may not happen). Repeat this at 60% and 30% breakpoints, unless you’re the tank (there’s no 30% breakpoint - the tank needs to be kept above half).

There may also be an exception if I can place a decent Healing Rain, but for the most part, there’s no other real passive healing in the kit. I’ll keep Earth Shield on the tank, and if Healing Stream Totem doesn’t choose you, sorry Pikachu…

Since I feel a lot of the problem does rest in the mastery, I’m not going to re-hash that, but I think the passive healing needs called out. So, I’m going to hit on passive healing for other classes and end rant…

  • Paladins had it worse until Glimmer. Their mastery is arguably worse. Now though, paladins are straight blastin’. They get passive healing from doing damage, and passive damage from doing healing. There’s some hard casting between, but the gameplay has fundamentally changed for the spec which brings a ton of passive healing.
  • Holy Priest has renew and mending. Ontop of that, Circle of Healing and Holy Word Sanc are amazing burst AoE healing that seems to line up well with encounter burst phases. Also, mana costs are much more efficient than Chain Heal. Chain Heal is like Prayer of Healing because of the mana costs and cast times, but the positional requirement is harder to work with - the jump endpoints vs. a radial heal. Because of HoTs and the Holy Words, Holy Priest has a little better time once things go from bad to worse, and there’s plenty of mana efficient group spot healing to try and prevent Deep Healing scenarios.
  • Discipline Priest might be the closest to a lack of passive healing compared to Shaman if you throw out Atonement. Between that and Shadow Mend, with a spot PWS, I feel it’s not as bad. If you take Shadow Covenant though, the group healing gap is massive.
  • Monk and Druid have a good set of HoTs that function passively after being cast, providing sustained healing and survivability “after-the-cast” which Shaman is totally lacking (Riptide is the only competitor, has a maximum of 2 charges when talented, has no duration extension, and is mostly useful to pump Tidal Waves).

That said, Resto Shaman may be the most fun healer for me because of watching tanks get skittish - reminds me someone else is actually there.

Something else I feel left off the table but I know is hidden in there, I just want to make explicit: Shaman mastery is a huge problem in PvP. It’s doesn’t get strong until a friendly player is already in a kill window for burst/cc.

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I don’t know dudes. You’re not wrong. Yea for pvp the mastery isnt ideal. Again I haven’t done much end game content on my shaman, but I find that we need time to cast, granted. But we also have dmg mitigation in earthen wall totem and spirit link. Tanks and dps will have the “hes scrambling” when I use earthen wall or spirit link, which is not the case for me. Both of those are on pretty short CDs and I use earthen as much as I can in my rotation. Keeping my targets’ health lvled up, I cast 2 high tides or whatever and everybody is ok and I can do that every min. I do use healing rain on CD our mana pool is huge. And for pvp, the healing surge crit essence > unleash life > healing surge. Tops off most players.
I find the play style smooth but challenging with our wide utility abilities(edit), totems go a long way. Spirit walkers grace in pvp is pretty awsome, allows me to cast healing rain on the move and high tide procs, I’m not really casting chain heal otherwise, not in arena anyway.
M+ is a struggle I wont lie. But haven’t done much of them.

[Post edited by Forum Moderator to remove obscene language. Please keep our Code of Conduct in mind when posting.]

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For arena I find in 3s they are coming for us most of the time. And I have like 3 burst survival sequences available with CDs.

  1. Healing rain, Earthen wall, earthbind, capacitor>> ghost wolf. If they force spirit link totem so be it but I try to save it.
  2. Healing tide totem with a repeat of totems ghost wolf.
  3. And I still have Ascendance.
    This order may change depending on arena circumstances, I may use Ascendance first.

I welcome feedback, as I’m not up there with top end players lol.
Thanks for reading.

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Why was I edited for obscene language? What obscene language did I use? I edited the f-word to fack when prompted. Is that it?
Thank you.

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speaking of mastery… I wish it were something to focus on for ele… id love to see massive amounts of stuff flying all over the screen!

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Resto needs better DPS in dungeons, that’s what’s really holding it back. Give resto windfury totem to give as a way to contribute to damage in dungeons.

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“Keeping my targets’ health leveled up” Out of curiosity, how often do you strategically let your targets drop to below 40% before healing to take advantage of our mastery? Because if you don’t and you keep them topped up, you won’t get much use use out of the Shaman mastery.

Edit: Shoot, I meant to post this as my Shaman Voltorch. This is an alt I’m currently working on lol.

1 Like