I’m dabbling in arena, and my druid got purged some times in the last few skirmish game. I have looked up purge on Wowhead, it seems to be able to dispel a handful of effects. If I read right, the combustion buff from fire mage can be removed, and wind shear can shutdown a caster. That alone looks very good. Wind shear and purge should make restore shaman a valuable asset then.
However, because restore shaman is not in the meta, meaning other healers have things that out-value the purge and windshear. Is purging not a decisive factor for high rating players? Is there a reason for MW being more popular than ever other than high HPS?
purge is extremely valuable
priests,mages, and demonhunter also bring a magic dispel so it’s not unique to shaman though
shear is also extremely powerful it’s the shortest cooldown kick in the game
the honor talent grounding totem is EXTREMELY strong as well in the shaman kit
shaman healing output is tuned pretty poorly and unless you’re healing something like a dh cleave or SOMETIMES a destro team you’ll really feel how insignificant your heals are
life cocoon with traits and an honor talent is around a 1 minute cooldown making it incredibly powerful
mw healing output outside of that is very very strong which is all that really matters
often healer meta is really decided more by mana efficiency and hps
last season mage/lock/rdruid and rdruid cleaves were extremely meta
rdruid hps goes down a little and monk hps goes up a lot and suddenly monk replaces them in all the comps they’d typically play
if shaman got drastic hps buffs tomorrow they would likely just take mws place in cleaves and lock comps
the only (mostly) constant is usually rogue mage
they likely never wanna play with a shaman or monk at higher levels due to drs
keep in mind that many dps classes also have a purge (mage, lock pet, dh, priests, dps shamans), so the ability isn’t exclusive to having a shaman healer.
MW is strong because you can cycle cocoon/vitality conduit (both extremely powerful short cd instant casts) for almost every ‘go’ your opponent can set up, in addition to very high HPS as you mentioned. Unless they make a big mistake, a MW can singlehandedly drag the match into heavy dampening