Feedback: Shamans

[Magniwl-zuljin]

Resto Shaman

Some extremely weird tuning changes here. First I’ll quote the dev note about healers:

@Linxy

Developers’ notes: In this Midnight update, we’re making several tuning changes across all healer specializations. We have been looking at data from all forms of content and have noticed that healing burst and incidental healing has crept back up to a place that is higher than we would like it to be.
We have made changes to every healer specialization to adjust the output of many of their spells. Many sources of burst healing or incidental/uncontrolled healing have been reduced, but we have also increased the value by several spammable healing spells. We’re closely monitoring the situation and will continue to adjust healer throughput as Midnight’s beta test continues.

Pretty much all of your changes to resto shaman this week have hit this pretty hard, which makes sense when taking into account the underlying principle of your argument. There are a few like the surging totem healing reduction that simply don’t mix with this, while also exposing flaws in the hero talent tuning philosophy surrounding “incidental/uncontrolled” healing.

However, the underlying problems with resto shaman throughput continue to be unfortunately tainting how much power we actually feel through our spells such as healing rain and chain heal which do not have parity with their reward or their mana:throughput ratio.

Healing Rain

1. This spell has actively become worse for totemic (which was the main point of the skill cap of the hero tree) which was actually not an incedental part of our kit, but an active one. This doesn’t make sense in conjunction with your stated dev goals.
2. Healing Rain as a spell (as well as surging totem) are only partially considered “incedental and uncontrolled” healing since the player is an active participant in moving the spell to more effective locations. This isn’t the same as lifebloom passively healing an extra target, because there is no skill cap in placing the spell as it does this healing regardless of the targets hp (new apex talent for rdruid). This was an overnerf
3. Healing Rain is completely worthless for farseer and just eliminates many talents from the tree as that hero spec. Ideally you guys should have actually buffed healing rain to make it so that we have to be a more active participant in placing it effectively. If I whiff the placement, not only does it not do incedental healing, but it doesn’t do any healing at all. This shouldn’t classify under your stated goals. I should feel rewarded that I placed healing rain correctly, but I don’t at this current tuning level (not to mention the healing rain talents just suck in general minus downpour which has a 3 talent buy-in).

EDIT: In an even weirder twist of fate, you guys somehow nerfed efflorescence less than you did healing rain this week, while that spell has no skill conditional with a talent that just puts it on your lifebloom target. C’mon now.

Chain Heal

1. Chain heal already had mana:throughput issues compared to healing wave before today. It doesn’t make sense that you technically only buffed this ratio by baking in the base mana reduction value from coalescing waters. You just buffed both spells equally, which makes absolutely no sense if you do the math on both spells.
2. Like above, the overall throughput value of Chain Heal is incredibly low, and still suffers from the issue in some content where the jumps might actually miss if you don’t use it correctly. Furthermore, in a perfect world where every jump hits, it is still worth less in a mana:throughput ratio than healing wave without even adding the healing from whispering waves. This needs to have a fairly large increase to actually feel worthwhile atm.
3. The talent parity between healing wave and chain heal isn’t great: There is no talent like whispering waves that feels good for chain heal. Not to mention a talent like flow of the tides can actually be a trap to some newer players who won’t think of the overall throghput ratios of when it is most ideal to consume your riptide to increase chain heal (which is something like 10s left or less).

Hero Talent changes

They mostly fit in with your desired goals, but it kind of waters down the main throughput “feel good” moments in our kit. It doesn’t feel great to hear that most of our throughput in hero talents is “incedental” when it could have something more interactive.