WoW Shaman is like a mix of WC3’s Shaman and Witch Doctor.
Shadow Hunter (chain heal & hex) was based on a Witch Doctor (like how Farseer was based on Shaman), which had the healing stuff and not water-based at all. Basically all resto’s water & healing stuff was created for WoW’s Shaman, probably because Shamans were elemental and it made sense.
In an alternative universe, there’d be no Restoration spec, it would be Witch Doctor Shaman…or would’ve been a great hero talent tree.
Resto had very little to do with water until they added riptide in wrath and later healing rain and turned the visuals of their main heals blue in Cata to make them look watery.
Shaman were spiritual leaders for their people and spiritual healers that also used water totems to restore mana and health. Some of their talents had water themed text, but the heal spells didn’t.
If you like the water theme, that’s fine. But it sucks that they changed chain heal without adding a glyph to keep the iconic look.
really? Healing WAVE and Healing SURGE are not water themed?
Water totems? Healing STREAM, Mana SPRING
Water Walking?
Yeah… not watery at all… sure
The golden chain heal from Warcraft 3 was also called healing wave.
‘Wave’ isn’t exclusive to water. I can’t believe I need to inform you of that.
It also wasn’t healing surge back then, it was lesser healing wave. And neither it nor healing wave had water themes on the icon or the visuals.
Valid points on both sides of the argument, I feel like. To me it just feels like too many themes are crammed into 1 class/spec. Hunter has the same issue (arguably worse). Shaman is trying to accommodate that Tidesage fantasy and the witch dr fantasy and the tauren plains farseer etc etc into it and it’s like… -_-, idk. Maybe would’ve benefitted from splitting the class into 2 or adding a 4th spec
so, you are denying the water totems…
Fire mage also only had like 3 fire spells in vanilla. The theme got more and more clear with time as Blizz themselves extended the lore and fleshed out rotations. That goes for literally every class, it’s not unique to shamans
Too many themes were crammed into shaman in vanilla wow, that’s for sure.
Orc shamans and Farseer + witch doctors / shadow hunter + spirit walkers / Tauren chieftain reincarnate is a lot of fantasy themes for one class. And only the Farseer had anything to do with using the elements so that’s even more theme thrown on top.
Again, I’m fine with resto taking on a more prominent water role. But chain heal was an iconic ability. The golden green beam just can’t be replaced.
The level 20 classic shaman quest " call to water " literally introduces us to water being restorative, and is a Resto shaman’s source of healing. I get WC 3 and pre wow might be different but in WoW it has always been water.
"Take shard. Take shard and give life.
Give life and understand. Understand water is life… corruption stops life.
You protect and give life with water’s power."
“Pure water will not only give life back to those who are injured, but can have many other effects”
Literal quest text from classic lvl 20 shaman quest to get the water totem. ^ So yeah we can assume that healing wave/etc are all water based even as early as classic, plus there are resto talents with watery names.
I personally always loved the water themes and riptide is still my favorite spell to this day. I think they should re add that chain heal glyph back though, so people have options.
I’m glad you agree.
Like you said, your fairly new to it and the muscle memory is still rather unnatural. I also thought the same, coming from levelling and doing dungeons on resto druid and disc priest, i found myself often sitting there as a shaman wondering what to press to do some emergency healing.
Now its fluid, i have the muscle memory there and i actually find healing with resto easy mode. The difference with resto shaman that i think throws peopel off is there basic baseline healing abilities is where most the grunt is - they have okay cooldowns as well but your generic healing is really strong so i think as a new resto player a lot of people do what i first did and wondered “what button do i press to get everyone topped up again”
I thought the water effect on ch was a glyph?
You basically want as little haste as your are comfortable with. If your focus is in m+, that can be a bit higher. Crit is huge for resto shams.
Its definitely a slower cast per minute sorta class, that focuses on those slower casts hitting for much more.
Nah, that’s all you buddy lol. Resto shaman is by far the best old school healer feel in the game at this moment imo. It’s not hard to play, you aren’t playing around anything major. You just heal.
AoE DMG: Riptide, chain heal, chain heal, riptide, chain heal, chain heal etc
ST DMG: Riptide, healing surge (wave), healing surge (wave), riptide, healing surge (wave), healing surge (wave).
Follow that priority while maintaining a healing stream totem and your new surging totem down and be aware of when to use SLT and its money. Then you can throw in some flame shocks, chain lightening, oo, I got lava surge! lava burst, chain lightening.
I’m kind of ruined on resto shaman cause I played chains of devastation with vesper totem in SL. It’s my all time fav shaman feel by far.