Within this post I will attempt to provide feedback on two things:
1) current changes pushed to the PTR for Resto Shaman
2) future changes for Resto Shaman
PTR Feedback for Resto Shaman:
> 1. "Earth Shield is no longer exclusive with Lightning Shield."
This change is great as it allows us to properly heal other Shamans without overwriting their own buffs.
The potential bug or balancing issue with this currently on the PTR in that one Shaman is allowed to place multiple shield types on themselves; either Lighting+Earth or Water+Earth. There is also a bug currently on PTR where the game will seemingly choose to discharge either shield’s charges at random when taking a hit.
In my opinion for this to be properly balanced, Earth Shields should have to be traded between Shamans (akin to Mage’s Focus Magic ability talent in WotLK).
> 2. "Riptide healing can now trigger the Power Surge rune when used."
Resto shaman’s biggest flaw is their reliance on hardcasting, but luckily Riptide really helps round out their toolkit by giving them an instant cast heal on a short CD. It serves two primary purposes in allowing them 1) a good way to instantly heal while moving and 2) a strong rotation for single+two target healing which allows them to restore charges to Tidal Waves between HW/LHW casts.
This change is also great because it allows us to catch up on the throughput we may have lost from moving or from the long 1.5s GCD on Riptide & totems. HOWEVER from testing on the PTR, Power Surge does not seem to proc from overheal on Riptide’s HoT.
In my personal best case scenario tests (with minimal overheal) on ptr, I only received 4 procs from about 80 ticks worth of RNG rolls. Assuming from 4 extra casts of CH, that equates to about 5-8k extra total healing over 3.5 min-- that is less than a 2% buff to our overall throughput!! 
The another big issue issue with Riptide is it’s spread-ability. With a 15s duration and 1.5s GCD, the Riptide HoT is really only spreadable to 2-3 targets-- such that only 3 concurrent RNG rolls (MAX) for Power Surge can occur per tick. And unfortunately, spreading Riptide isn’t normally the optimal option between hardcasting bigger heals like HW or CH. Therefore I suggest buffing the duration of Riptide to something longer such as 18s (which is the same length of Flame Shock with the Burn rune), as well as potentially lowering the cooldown to 3-5s.
Future Changes for Resto Shaman:
- Allow hybrid specs to excel in their specific roles, but not dominate in all 3 (heal, tank, & dps):
Nearly every complaint regarding Shaman on the forums revolves around PvP and how busted Ele & Enh Shamans are. This is overwhelming due to Shaman’s ability to off-heal at no opportunity cost due to their instant cast speed heals and the infinite mana from Shamanistic Rage. The popular solution that I see player suggesting is to tie these instant cast healing runes (Riptide & Earth Shield) to resto shaman talents which is prety fair.
Healing Way & Ancestral Healing are THE tank healing talents so maybe requiring one of them to use the Earth Shield rune is a fitting solution. And then for Riptide, you could just require Mana Tide Totem!
- Give resto shamans more throughput:
Despite many players viewing the Shaman specs as a monolith (or as an unkillable “raidboss” as some players have put), the Resto shaman spec has been neglected for nearly every phase this entire season. It wasn’t very uncommon to be rejected/removed from a pvp or dungeon group for literally not being a priest. Based off WCL data from this phase alone, Priests, Druids, & Paladins are doing 700-800 HPS. Meanwhile, most Resto Shamans are doing 400-500 DPS on the top end.
A good suggestion I have seen floating around is that instead of Chain Heal consuming the Riptide HoT effect, it should spread it with Chain Heal bounces! This would not only vastly improve the spreadability of Riptide for Resto shaman, but it would also make the buff to Power Surge interacting with Riptide a lot more meaningful!
While Resto Shaman players are excited for Healing Rain to become instant cast via Relic slot, it still competes with one of our best throughput runes (Overload). Even if Healing Rain was moved to a free/useable rune slot (like boots), that alone is not enough to put us on equal footing with every other healing class in the game.
Please give us a throughput rune on the boot slot. Earthliving Weapon. Cloudburst Totem. Beacon Of Light-- which could even be worked into Spirit of the Alpha. Literally ANYTHING that increases our healing output please!