The incoming tuning is honestly probably way too much. This spec is already performing at the highest keys and does really high throughput. People aren’t playing it because of the anti-synergy with Healing Rain and the Tier set.
Literally just making Healing Rain instant cast and buffing its Farseer healing via Maelstrom Supremacy. Or fixing the tier set for Farseer so they aren’t incentivized to press it is probably enough, lol. Like make it so Insurance is put on an ally when an ancestor goes away or something.
Seriously, this buff is too much. You’re gonna wind up with another Disc Oracle Priest situation on your hands in the future if these go through.
It seems like they made the choice to massively buff it based on how few people play it over totemic without realizing why people play totemic.
Or they so desperately want you to hard-cast healing rain as at least one spec that they’d rather overbuff the rest of the kit than concede that it really was just that one thing we told them over and over again that wasn’t fun about it.
I would have just made healing rain instant and maybe made healing wave cheaper so you could have fun with a farseer undulation spec. Instead they buffed almost everything else rather than do what people had asked for.
Some times i just think devs dont play the game or they REALLY dont know what they are doing… i myself been playing farseer resto since the beginning of expansion. What you said about healing rain is all we need, if this changes go life farseer gonna become op.
It’s been a minute since I played my rsham (started tww expac on it) and played Farseer from the start and found it just as strong (if not stronger) than totemic, which was far more popular. Definitely had/has much better mana management. If things haven’t changed much on this front, then you’re entirely correct here. But it might not matter. Most resto shamans are hard wired to chain heal, so will probably play totemic even if Farseer becomes OP.
I would argue healers are very well balanced at this point. Oracle Disc priest is still strong but it’s replaceable. I think it’s just still highly represented because it’s a side grade to resto druids, resto shamans, MWs, so they’re just going to continue to play the character they already geared up.
I’d guess eternal barrier + oracle disc became popular because of its damage mitigation since it has no utility or damage to write home about.
I think the M+ meta healer usually takes its spot either because it can save people from something other healers can’t, or it does significantly more damage than other healers to help you beat a difficult timer (which is why holy priest was top M+ healer in one season I think).
Farseer bubbles getting buffed is neat, but they’re still random and smaller than disc even after the buff (and degen over time still). I think shaman damage was already higher than barrier disc (and passive and easy for totemic) so if that didn’t bring them above disc before I doubt the changes will.
My two most geared healers are my disc priest and resto shaman and I already preferred pugging with my shaman because of the interrupt alone, but I don’t push high keys. I’ve tried one 12 as a resto shaman so far and the tank was taking so much damage I went from barely spending mana in most 10s to having to drink constantly in a 12 because I had to cast healing surge so much as totemic. I’ll try again as farseer after the buffs. If I have to cast surge more I might as well play a spec that leans into that I suppose. Hard casting HR will make me very sad still though. It’s why I speced into totemic out of originally trying farseer in season 1. The season 1 set bonuses I think were also much better for farseer than the healing rain focused current set bonus.
If not for the set bonus I might just spec out of healing rain entirely as farseer, though acid rain also makes it hard to abandon.
I haven’t played farseer in awhile. Probably not as it is, but if healing wave or surge were spammable mana wise I think undulation farseer would become strong. Being able to create more spirits all the time would also create more bubbles which were just buffed.
Farseer has far more maintenance than Totemic too. Totemic lets you focus on other things while you’re ticking boxes as Farseer.
Hopefully in 10.2 they streamline Farseer and make it smooth while keeping it different from Totemic. Farseer feels pretty outdated while Totemic feels modern. Spec complaints in the past were addressed with Totemic’s design but not with Farseer’s, then we get a tier set that leans heavily towards Totemic and its QoL.
I did start back up on the resto sham. Still just 640 ivl or so atm and doing baby keys, but it’s enough to get a feel for the specs and I do agree Totemic feels much smoother. Really like the play style of healing rain totem and being able to reposition it every 10 sec. And of course, because it’s a totem it’s instant.
With Farseer, I keep losing DPS/Heals to the tank pulling everything out of my healing rain and I just have to stand there starring at the emptiness within. And of course nothing smooth about having to spend time casting the emptiness (instant every 30 seconds is still just kinda meh).
For Farseer, I do like that you get a permanent Ancient, if talented appropriately for it. That’s fun and I like the bonus you get from it. But after truly giving Totemic a fair shake this last week, it is the more fun (smooth) spec to play for sure.
Not really, just drop it down when you need the Deluge healing bonus for healing checks while consuming Riptides with Chain Heal. You get far more than enough Insurance procs naturally without leaning on the 4 set.
Insurance still does 8-10% of overall healing when mostly ignoring Healing Rain.
You could probably heal fine as farseer specing out of healing rain entirely, but acid rain still does a lot of your damage even with the obnoxious cast time and duration of healing rain.
Healing wise I wish we could take the season 1 set bonuses instead of S2 for Farseer but that still wouldn’t make up for the acid rain damage in M+.
When I cast HR in M+ when I’m trying Farseer it’s usually because I’m trying to do acid rain damage to a group, not because the pitiful healing it does is of that much value.
I think they should move acid rain somewhere more neutral so it doesn’t require rain and make it a choice talent against a talent that buffs flame shock as an alternative. Make flame shock AoE apply like sunfire and buff its damage. Or make it a choice talent against a magma totem talent. Or a talent that buffs chain lightning.
ngl I remember back during bfa if you had 3-4 flame shocks up you had lava surge for every global if you wanted it. But I thought I remembered a patch a while back that simply stated they were reducing the chance of lava surge proccing on multiple targets and I always had the impression it was exponential. Such that by the time you have it on 4 targets the 5th target only increased the chance by a few %.
