Is this mostly a PvP thing? I feel fine in raid content; I’m also Resto so I can more freely pop into ghost wolf if needed. Genuinely curious.
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I think where DPS shaman specs fail in the tippy top tier of raiding is a way to exploit mechanics, namely oneshots. No block, no cloak, no bubble, no blinks. No fire, no energy, no nothing, and mythic progression must pop, pop, POP.
In heroics it’s fine, after gear I’m sure it’s fine in mythics, but it’s noticeably missing special tools. Resto happens to have Spirit Link as a unique way to mitigate mechanics, so it tends to still see use iirc.
That’s not the same thing though. Immunities are considered raid utility. Encounters shouldn’t be designed around them but can definitely make fights easier.
It comes in handy for death runs but so does…soul stone…dk/druid brez.
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This is a war of attrition, when Ion is wrong, you don’t have to explain to him why he’s wrong, just that Reincarnation is not a defensive.
Because the objective of a defensive is to increase our survivability to not die, we wouldn’t need Reincarnation if we had defensives…
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It COULD be though if they tried hard enough. Basically like a delayed cheat death. Give it a timer so you have to rez in X seconds, scale the health and mana, make it a pvp talent, whatever.
Until then though, it’s definitely not a defensive, and it’s sad to think that they could make it one if they dared.
This is hopefully a bug. Otherwise, it’s a terrible change. I tested it out on PTR, and essentially if you stop to cast a heal and then go back to doing dps, you’ll never regen the mana you spent on that heal. Basically, this means you get to cast four healing surges per engagement and then you’re effectively OOM for the rest of the fight. Absolutely dreadful change for both pve and especially pvp.
I won’t even play a hybrid at all if this is the new direction they’re taking them in. The “pure” dps classes already have better self healing & durability than we do. There’s no reason to neuter us even further.
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The clearly read feedback. A ton of changes for shaman in beta have occurred specifically because of feedback. Ele Shaman was unplayable with their initial implementation.
As far as PVP specifically, thats another matter.
They could take five seconds of the day to write a line of code that grants % damage reduction and % increased incoming healing based off of our missing health while a shield is on.
It would be so easy to give us proper defensives…
Actually I’d prefer this because we’re always stuck in bloody stuns…
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Imagine if you just made it reset on boss wipes like every other battle Rez type ability. It can still operate off the shared cooldown since you revive with 40% less health.
Resto is largely fine and functioning in all aspects with lower end m+. Play a dps spec and you see how much they struggle as you lose a lot of your defensive cooldowns. Resto had astral shift, healing tide/spring, chain heal, healing rain, with options to talent into an unleash healing, earth shield, spirit wolf, Bulwark/Rez totem, and an ascendance that heals on use.
Enh currently has astral shift, spring removed, chain heal removed, healing rain removed, healing from wolves removed, stun from wolves removed and can talent into earth shield and spirit wolf
Ele currently had astral shift, spring removed, chain heal removed, healing rain re.oved, and can take t into earth shield, ancestral guidance, and spirit wolf
Other defensives that remove your ability to attack/heal grant some type of immunity, whereas spirit wolf requires 4sec ramp up time to provide dmg reduction and locks you out of heals/dps. It gives movement speed increase instantly and maybe that is enough to warrant the 4 sec ramp up but I disagree as really spirit wolf isn’t useful for a spec other than resto.
Ancestral guidance is dmg to healing conversion which requires Ele to do dmg, but suffers from same thing astral shift does. Useless in a stun.
Enh can self heal itself at cost of maelstrom.
Our toolkit isn’t awful but it is behind everyone else’s baseline.
Resto is so much stronger in pvp it isn’t even funny. I am leveling one and it’s night and day how survivable it is, with actual meaningful cooldowns that are totems.
Enh/Ele are getting spring and chain heal back in SL but will it be enough? Probably not.
Historically when these specs have been strong in pvp they had overtuned burst, or access to additional talent defensives/utility in stone Bulwark, earthen power, and frozen power.
It’s just frustrating to see these issues not even addressed in PvP talents.
Yeah, I figured it might be spec specific. I don’t really play the other two specs at all. I noticed a big difference when I swapped to the lucid dreams and fury of air combo for enh. Made a huge difference to my survivability, especially in visions.
It’s very good for PVE, in PVP it’s not so great.
If you’re having difficulty in visions, make sure you get the HP recovery food for visions and drink the HP recovery pots. Then Fury of Air/Lucid Dreams is just the cherry on the cake.
Oh I’m not. But the difference is very noticeable. Also helps to have the slappers. I’m fortunate enough to have the mythic version for my main hand 
It’s def spec specific and largely pvp focused. It’s just funny to me that I can go into a bg (albeit) low levels and do top healing, not die, and do better dps through flame shock lava surges as resto and feel more useful than a dps spec (get more kills than my enh for sure). I am sure this changes as I get higher level (currently lvl 112on my resto).
4 hots, astral shift, spirit link totem, healing tide totem, ascendance burst heal on use, spirit wolf, earthen wall
Vs.
1 heal, 1 hot, astral shift, spirit wolf
On top of any cc/utility I have on Enh, I have on resto as well (hex, bind, tremor, cap, shear)
Yes and no. It’s PvP and high end M+. We’re not bad in Raiding at all, but when it’s small group content or PvP we lack significantly more in the defensives department than every single other class. I could go down the list of every other class, but it wouldn’t be fair. I’d have to go down classes with hybrid healing like druids, monks, paladins, and spriests.
Druids and Monks have significantly more movement in the form of sprints, rolls, shape shifting slows, transcendence, flying serpent kick, stealth. That’s not adding their defensive abilities like Karma, brew, diffuse magic, bark skin, bear form, survival instincts, and passive dmg reduction in boom kin.
For the sake of the length of this post, I’m not even going to get into paladins and priests.
Shamans have ghost wolf, hard cast heal, and astral shift which isn’t even magic damage.
It’s pathetic. Absolutely pathetic. BUT HEY. Maybe I’m just delusional. I think there are so many ways we could improve our survivability in the sense of game functionality and fantasy sense. Whether it’s movement or healing or flat damage reduction, shamans need more when it comes to PvP and M+ in my opinion. And that’s simply what it is: an opinion.
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