Another resto rant but it’s needed

Classes Shaman
21

Do this!

  1. A multi-strike totem - it would repeat a percentage from spells and attacks.
  2. It would benefit party and raid members.
  3. Maximum damage the totem can achieve would be capped, preferably by the number of players receiving the benefit and based on the shaman’s primary stat, as if it were an AoE damage spell. (Possible totem overload mechanic?)
  4. It would require a fixed duration and a short cooldown to limit reapplication (hard fixing maximum damage per unit time).
  5. It’s also critical to ensure the combat log marks it as the shaman’s totem doing the damage, not the buffed player.

A problem of the old buff design was properly delineating where the contributing damage was originating, as class buffs were typically flat stat buffs and then “baked into” the damage done. New design has the healers actually doing the damage. This maintains a “support” feeling to the play but gives a big benefit to the shaman’s parses.

2 Likes
22

More or less whenever earthen wall totem is available.

1 Like
23

I mean in general shaman is the worst class in the game. Enhance does good damage but does almost everything half as well as other melee in the game (horrible defensives), Rshaman is mana inefficient and their mastery literally makes no sense…and elemental is just not as good as other ranged specs.

I love shaman and it’s super fun to play but they need to rework some of the balance design around the class.

1 Like
24

I don’t know what to tell you man, but resto shaman is most mana efficient. And definitely not the worst class in the game LOL!

2 Likes
25

I’ll agree with enhancement, but Resto is great and Ele has its highs and lows (currently in a mid-high).

Resto mastery helps you heal targets gravely wounded. It makes sense, even if it isnt always as efficient as other healer’s masteries. Mastery aside, they are as powerful as ever and fill their niche perfectly. All they need now is better M+ viability which can be fixed with talents or focus going into SL.

Elemental is decent. Its powerful in AoE, just lacks a defensive. Its one of the few non mage/lock ranged classes that can compete in the Arena competition too. In pve, anything not a mage or warlock is also just not great due to how much those two bring to the raid, this isn’t unique to elemental.

1 Like
26

Sure Resto mastery is good, although it’s not as good as it was on legion because of the secondary stats squish, but the problem with the mastery is that it’s not good enough to justify it be boring and unrewarding. Every healer mastery rewards you for taking good actions related to the spec mechanic, so your direct actions makes your mastery happens, the shaman mastery isn’t rewarding us for anything, it’s babysitting us, and the only action we can take to make it happen is ignore our allys long enough to have their HP below 40%. I know, people can argument that our mastery is rewarding us for keeping doing damage, so when you finally heal you ally itt going to heal more, but the problem with this approach of thinking is that it’s an indirect action and reward, there isn’t a meter relating those things and your are going to be rewarded as much as someone that is just afking enough before healing.

2 Likes
27

Don’t think there’s any way I could be healing 20+ keys as Resto without Spirit of Preservation minor. Losing that, and Igneous Potential traits, is going to be a far bigger nerf to mythic+ than the meh stuff we’re gaining in shadowlands so far. Meh Earth Shield being baseline can’t come close to competing with 300k+ crit Healing Surges on the tank with 5 Spirit of Preservation stacks. Not to mention losing half your dps without 3x Igneous trait. A lot of the covenant abilities do both damage and healing, which is nice for mythic+, but all healers have similar covenants which also do both, so covenant’s are neutral in terms of what dps a resto shaman can bring.

Resto is already behind in mythic+ (5% representation in timed 20+ keys), in Shadowlands it looks even worse, so far at least, but most the unimplemented stuff left is borrowed 1 expansion powers so rather see positive changes to the core spec than some op legendary or something.

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Of course, we don’t yet have Soulbinds, Conduits, and Legendary equipment in the SL Alpha so it’s pretty much impossible to say whether or not losing Essences is going to impact Resto’s viability in content.

1 Like
29

I am one for keeping the mastery as it is, but giving us more mastery % per point again. That is why it was better before. I don’t need to have my mastery be fancy. The lower health an ally is, the more effective my heals will be. How is that more rewarding for doing a bad job? It just makes you a more efficient healer. When more healing is needed your mastery kicks in. This allows you more freedom to dps in dungeons and when people dip low in dungeons or raids your mastery will help you stabilize. I don’t understand why people don’t like the concept of the mastery. I get being upset it was nerfed. I get wishing you had better single target heals or dungeon dps, especially aoe, but the concept of our mastery is a part of what i love about shaman. I really hope they keep the mastery, but buff it to be strong like it was in draenor.

1 Like
30

Because if you are bad at healing you will receive a greater boost from your mastery than someone who is good and knows which heals to use and when. If you don’t know which heals to use and when, health bars will be lower triggering a stronger mastery buff

31

Ever since Holy Paladin mastery was removed from the game, Deep Healing has been my favorite healer mastery. I think it’s valuable in all endgame scenarios. I think that having group members’ HP dip very low is inevitable regardless of whether you’re good at healing or not. Buffing your healing passively based on how much it is needed is unique and useful.

I agree with the complaints about lacking performance in endgame content, but I don’t think Mastery: Deep Healing is a component that needs to be fixed.

2 Likes
32

The mastery is fine, it rewards healing low HP targets. It’s interesting as we have to manually target the heavily wounded ones. In short the mastery takes effect when the group is damaged. When everyone is stable, then mastery doesn’t matter other than padding the meter.

On the other hand, Druid’s mastery looks like it’s interactive, but in fact, it’s the same principle, only active when the group is wounded. At any point, there could be between 4-10 hot effects up. During demanding period, there can be about 20 Hots running. It’s a good boost to healing; it looks like their mastery rewards the druid to put on as many hots as possible. However, this is their job anyway to heal others. When the group is stable, only hots are running on tank. At this point, the mastery doesn’t matter other than padding the meter with over-healing hots.

The two mastery effects look different but work quite similarly. They are active when we are healing wounded allies, and they are useless when nothing needs healing. In short, it’s fine, no need to change. I’m sure Blizzard has enough data on how much and how frequent the mastery effects kick in. They sure can tune the number accordingly.

I am not surprised to see druid’s HPS higher than shaman’s. They should be tuned that way to account for the over-healing nature of hots, and that we shaman have tools to mitigate incoming damage. Imaging adding up all the pyroblast casts that I prevented in my last BG to my HPS, that number would be massive. In raid, we can help interrupt ads to contribute to damage mitigation.

33

Buffing mastery would be awkward for mythic+. Resto already in a bit of an non ideal situation with crit being the best healing stat, while being the 2nd worst DPS stat (because most your dmg is in lava burst which auto crits, making crit useless for your biggest damage source). If Mastery became the best stat, then you have your top 2 stats being bad for dealing dmg, which is very important for mythic+. Maybe if they added a damage component to all healing masteries, it’d be cool if your dmg abilities also hit harder on lower hp targets (though not as large a % as the healing).

34

I mean if someone is so bad to the point to not even knowing their spell priority to heal effectively then sure…

Most likely though it takes more skill to know when you can allow your party to drop lower without putting them at risk, meanwhile you can maximize your DPS to then take advantage of your mastery and bring them back up before the next dangerous mechanic hits.

I mostly dislike it in Raids where there are more healers interacting so you can’t really control the health of the party by yourself. For small group content like M+ where you are the only healer I think it’s quite good and (as I explained) gives room for more skilled players to make better use of it.

35

I agree add gust of wind back as well

36

Well there’s not knowing it all like you mentioned but then there’s also messing it up in practice even if you understand how it should go in theory. The mastery is rewarding the player messing up their heal rotation.

But yes I realize there is also a payoff for playing it properly. Even if I personally don’t like the style.

37

Yeah I understand what you say about how in theory it can feel like it rewards for people making mistakes but that’s not how it feels for me in practice. I can’t recall a time when the group messes up and I think “oh great!, I get to benefit from mastery”.

However it’s very common for me that when I’m doing something new or I’m not too familiar with a fight/dungeon I try to keep everyone topped off out of fear of something unexpected happening. However as I gain experience and knowledge of encounters/dungeons I start letting people sit at lower health more often.

In other words, at least from personal experience what I find is that a more experienced/knowledgeable player will more often keep the party at sub-100% health for longer and sometimes even let them drop to low health levels if he knows things are under control, while a less experienced one will tend to always try to top everyone off right away.

1 Like
38

I think you have a good point. I don’t main resto, I just dabble a bit on the side. And for me it’s not a playstyle I enjoy because as you pointed out I like to try to keep em topped up as best I can. Maybe if I mained it I would appreciate it more? But otherwise I think I prefer the gimmicks of other healers more.

1 Like
39

I think I’d prefer to see the mastery change completely. An idea would be to have a smart heal component splitting additional healing to nearby wounded targets on direct heals.

E.g. 8%-25% of your direct heals splash to up to 3 targets within 6 yards of their target, dividing the bonus healing by the most wounded.

So let’s say you have a tank and two melee DPS, the melee are at 90% and after the heal lands on the tank, she will be at 75%. The lost health percentage total is 45%. Your mastery is up to a 12% splash, so the mastery procs to heal the tank for a bonus ~6.7% (25% health missing / 45% target pool missing health percentage), and the two melee for ~2.7% (10% health missing / 45% target pool missing health percentage).

Since shaman healing can already be strong AoE, if there’s fear about the splash being too enabling, the division and language can be changed to something like:
… dividing the bonus healing to the primary target first and then by the most wounded.

In this same situation, the bonus healing for 12% mastery bonus would be a total of 9.3% bonus healing to the tank (6% + 6% * 25% missing health percentage / 45% total pool missing health percentage) and a smaller 1.3% splash to the nearby melee damage targets.

The effect would prioritize the 3 most wounded, so if the tank were at 100% after the procing heal lands, the first 90% melee would be the “primary target”, obtaining 9% of the splash healing (6% + 6% * 10% missing hp / 20% total pool) and the second 90% melee target would get the remaining 3% splash.

Trying to hard limit to “other” targets would not be desired! If the tank was isolated or no other nearby targets were injured, she would get the full bonus of the mastery (if zero, 100% primary). Otherwise gaining mastery in isolated healing scenarios goes wasted.

The coolest thing with this design would be casting chain heal and seeing a bunch of big and little heal procs flying out, sometimes healing the same targets with the splash.

3 Likes
40

I don’t agree with some arguments here, I’m sorry, but I want to make a point at each one of them to keep the discussion running :smiley:

I agree that we don’t need to have a fancy or complex mastery, just to have a new mastery that rewards us for taking direct actions, take the Holy Paladin’s mastery as an example, you get closer to the target you’re healing and you’re going to heal more, it’s just as simple as the Resto Shaman mastery, but the difference is the action-reward relation, you do a direct action (as a holy paladin is getting closer to the target) and you’re rewarded with your mastery being applied to your heal, this way you are going to be an efficient healer by learning to take good actions related to your class or spec, in this case by learning better positioning for each given situation.

The direct action that makes the Druid’s mastery happen in the action of stacking HoTs, but it’s not rewarding you for stacking HoTs because if the target is with full health it’s only going to over-heal and wast mana, IMO it’s rewarding us for being more proficient about how to use HoTs and predicting damage, so if you know that a spike of damage is about to happen you stack enough HoTs to make 'em just stronger enough to overcome that damage as efficiently as possible, so as you get more proficient with your class/spec you waste less mana, saving time (spent on drinking) and resource, giving you more opportunities to take other actions like doing damage or working on mechanics with your group.

I agree with you, it’s a great mastery in terms of allowing us to do more damage before healing, I do use it this way, but since there isn’t a direct relationship between doing damage and the mastery being applied it doesn’t feel as fun and rewarding as if there was a direct relationship between those two things, and I’m not saying that this is how I wish our mastery should be, but just that having this direct relation between action-reward makes it more fun, rewarding and compelling to learn how to take actions and decision to use it efficiently to increase you heals.

It’s about it, I just wish that we could have a mastery that is something related to how the class/spec works and that you gain proficiency (you can master, so mastery) over to increases your efficiency as a healer making it more fun, rewarding and compelling to use.