Please compensate Shamans for losing Ancestral Guidance

In Development Undermine(d) PTR Discussion
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Enh and Ele both need compensation for losing this especially in PvP, but in PvE as well. AG is not just a major group healing CD, it is also a big personal defensive. Edit: Ele got Storm Conduit in their honor talents as a defensive option and it is quite good, but Enhance still needs help it is squishier than Ele. Ideas below:

-Make Stone Bulwark Totem baseline and move Burrow to its place in the Class tree.

Reason: This would allow PvErs to take an additional defensive as needed, and allows PvPers to take other defensive honor talents like Stormweaver for Enh or Storm Conduit for Ele. Currently Burrow takes up a slot permanently for Ele/Enh in PvP which feels bad and limits what we can take pretty heavily when we also have Shamanism, Grounding Totem, Totem of Wrath, Static field and Stormweaver. Shamanism also being locked in mostly and grounding being taken very often.

OR

-Move Stormweaver to Natures Swiftness spot in the Class tree for Enhance Shaman.

Reason: This would solve 2 birds with 1 stone, it would make that side of the class tree useful for Enhance as it currently is not at all, it is not even niche, just not useable (Spiritwalkers down to NS) and it would give PvErs a way to off heal without losing a ton of damage now that AG is gone while giving PvPers the ability to talent into Stormweaver+3 honor talents which would feel a lot better defensively.

Healing Stream totem is not the way to do this for Elemental and Enhancement. Too many globals just to never achieve the same effect that Ancestral Guidance provided. It also doesn’t do the same healing as AG, Healing stream is trickle healing over 20ish seconds whereas AG has an immediate effect.

Enhance already has a lot of globals to press and we can’t even rely on Healing Stream as a personal defensive anyway as it heals 1 injured person every 1.8 seconds which may not be the Shaman.

Healing Stream totem is killable easily in PvP as well, which leaves us without a major defensive cooldown (AG) while having to press many more globals on Healing Stream only for it to likely get killed in the first few seconds in PvP, and even if it doesn’t get killed it will still not be nearly enough to make up for the loss of AG. AG single target heals for 700k-1mil, healing stream heals for 100-120kish with almost 10mil hp pools in pvp in 11.1 and again there is no guarantee it will heal the Shaman anyway.

Please make sure to compensate Shamans for the loss of AG, again it is not just a group off healing CD, it is a big personal defensive in all forms of content. Enhance especially needs compensation for this, I will be losing 5-6m+ healing in arena on myself every game and 7-8m+ in blitz on myself. Enh is already one of the squishier melee in the game, even Ele is tankier right now since Enh has less armor and is in melee.

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It seems blizzard clearly dont care about PVP balance anymore, they balance everything for M+ and raid environment and the scraps they tweak later.

Totens are safe in dungeon, but not in a PVP area

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This is an issue that hopefully gets addressed. Healing Stream buffs are just not enough and never really will be especially in PvP. Losing 10-16mil healing per 3s match or per shuffle round is actually an insane amount of healing to lose, especially to our own personal survivability.

There are many ways to go about compensating, ie for enhancement maybe Refreshing Waters can have some earth shield buffs tacked onto it ie ‘earth shield now grants you x armor and heals for x% more on yourself’ because right now earth shield is barely with re applying as enhance. Another way to go as stated before though that would benefit all 3 specs is Chain Harvest.

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They should give you Chain Harvest.

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I’d rather they just put the talent back. What problems was it causing that it should need removal?

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Essentially it’s just healing from dps specs that’s way too passive and easy to do. Macro it into ascend and it does the most healing ever (in pvp) and in pve mostly the same thing but you’ll have times where you use it outside of ascend.

The thing is they’ve been targeting it for a while, and they have targeted other ‘do damage to heal’ abilities as well ie natures vigil. The removal of AG isn’t the problem, it’s that so far there’s almost no compensation. I won’t ask for it back because I know they won’t do that.

Not like AG is very interesting, they could use this as an opportunity to come up with something more unique, again like Chain Harvest, but all we’ve seen are buffs to healing stream totem for ele and enh which is just not the way to go. Won’t work well for pvp, won’t be fun or interesting in pve, we need a semi strong burst healing cd ie chain harvest, and since it also deals damage it’ll be nice for resto to grab too.

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It seems the issue with it is that you can use it to heal other players, a strong healing cooldown in a dps spec. If this is the problem then make it so that it only heals the shaman, make it just give the shaman a ton of leech so that it functions as an active defensive CD instead kf removing it completely.

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Agreed.

Blizzard pleas

Give us df s1 self heals

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Please consider keeping it for ele and enha. Healing stream just won’t be enough

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There are other forms of compensation if the devs do not want to add Chain Harvest or something else new in AGs place. Suggestions for that:

-Earth Shield buffs. Put some Earth shield buffs into either Elemental Orbit or Refreshing Waters. For enhance “Earth shield now grants x armor and healing from Earth shield is increased by x% on the shaman”. For Elemental, “Healing from Earth Shield is increased by x% on the shaman” or bake that in baseline. Enh really could use some armor.

-Further Healing Stream buffs . Buff healing stream further especially in PvP. On ptr right now it is ticking for 100k every 1.8 seconds and only heals 1 person at a time, we will have 9-10m HP pools. This is not enough to make up for the loss of AG. Maybe add a choice node to Elemental resistance that allows Healing Stream to heal an extra person. and buff healing stream a bit more baseline, at least in PvP.

-Move Stormweaver from PvP talents to the class tree for Enhance (maybe put it on a choice node with Spiritwalkers grace because that entire side is useless for Enhance shaman) so PvE enhance shamans can utilize slightly weaker off heals with the choice to not sacrifice damage. Replace it with a damage oriented PvP talent because enhance shams are losing Ride the Lightning which hurts Stormbringer damage significantly.

If we do not get compensation for losing AG, we just straight up lose an ability that is doing 8-12m healing per round of solo shuffle and in 3s in PvP, 15-20m healing in blitz/rbgs, its a major loss. We need actual compensation to boost our personal survivability with this gone.

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They’re going to Judge Smails you guys, I can already see it.

“You’ll get nothing, and you’ll like it!!”

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There are so many ways they can compensate the personal defensive loss of AG without further increasing group off healing, they really need to do something. They need to realize while AG was a strong group healing CD, it was also a very strong personal CD.

My most recent idea/feedback is: Make Stone Bulwark totem baseline and move Burrow from PvP talents to Stone Bulwarks place in the class tree.

This benefits both PvE and PvP by giving PvErs an additional defensive now that they are losing a major one, and it gives PvPers access to more of their other defensive honor talents ie Stormweaver for Enhance and Storm Conduit for Ele.

That way they don’t even have to add anything extra. Enh shaman is the only melee spec in the game that has to take a major defensive talent like that in their PvP talents, other melee either have “optional” defensive talents ie Spellwarding not always being required whereas Burrow is, and they have BoP if they don’t take SW as well or they have small upgrades to baseline/class tree talent defensives. Having Burrow in our pvp talents feels real bad as it kind of permanently takes up 1 spot, and now with AG gone it is the perfect time to give that to PvErs as well. Its also just a really cool thematic shaman spell, brilliant design, all shamans should be able to get it not just pvp shamans.

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I think that there’s really only one logical way to compensate Shaman for losing AG: Giving us that ever-elusive tank spec!

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That wouldn’t quite help Ele or Enhance though lol, but it is something I’d love to see in the future.

Regardless though, hope we see something soon that makes up for this loss in terms of personal survivability.

Moving Burrow to Stone Bulwarks place in the class tree and making Stone Bulwark Totem baseline would honestly be all thats needed. Alternative option is moving Stormweaver to Stone Bulwark Totems spot instead of Burrow.

Gives PvErs an ‘immunity’ (can still be damaged by DoTs if you burrow with dots on you so not a traditional immune) and frees up a PvP honor talent for PvPers so we can actually select one of our other utility/defensive options. If Stormweaver is moved instead, that gives PvErs the ability to off heal/heal themselves without losing damage and gives PvPers that talent in addition to their honor talents.

AG is a big personal defensive loss, not just an off healing loss. Enh is already one of the squishier melee as well. Healing Stream buffs are fine for off healing compensation (although still meh due to globals) but we need something on the personal defensive end.

Losing something that is guaranteed to do 4-5 million healing to me every time I press it is very bad and Shaman is the only class in the game that has to select such a major defensive CD in their honor talents (Burrow), other classes typically have choices based on what they already have access to either baseline or from their class tree. Having Burrow in our honor talents is like having Divine Shield or Ice Block in honor talents which would be hated by both of those classes.

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losing ag is not great in either forms of content, but it’s especially bad in pvp. burrow and shamanism permanently take up 2 honor talent slots, shamanism isn’t that big of a deal but the fact shamans have to talent into their only immunity (aka their biggest and best defensive) in honor talents is outdated, no other class or spec has to do this.

if the only form of compensation for losing AG is healing stream buffs it will feel so bad in pvp. Pve too imo, but in pvp enh shamans do not have the globals to repeatedly throw down healing stream with how often we use cc and utility+off healing. PvP enh shamans are already talenting out of earth shield because it takes too many globals to keep reapplying with the amount of purges in the game, people were losing too much damage spam reapplying it.

healing stream doesn’t provide the same instant burst healing AG does to the shaman. spending more globals on off healing in pve instead of AG doing all of it is okay, but shamans need something to make up for the personal defensive side of AG that is lost.

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I agree, shamans feel squishy as it is currently.

If the problem with AG is too much group healing than could just make it either only heal the shaman, or change the talent completely and give shamans a bunch of leech during ascendance, which would essentially accomplish the same thing.

Or they need to just give shamans more defensive like another charge of Astral Shift or reduce the cd on Stone Bulwark Totem to 2 minutes. Or make earth shield an actual passive defensive and not just some garbage self healing thing for ele/enhance.

While I do think there is too much defensive bloat in the game. The fact that death knights and mages exist with their bloated defensive kit means other specs have to be at least somewhat close to them.

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The problem with AG was how it needed to line up with other cooldowns to be effective. Getting rid of it in favor of other healing cds that can be used when needed should be win for everyone.

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Unfortunately there is no win when we did not get anything in that second line there.

Realistically as I’ve said before I think all thats really needed is Burrow going into the class tree where Stone bulwark totem is, and Stone Bulwark totem going baseline. That solves issues in both PvP and PvE simultaneously. That makes up for the loss of AG in terms of its personal defensive power, and the healing stream buffs can make up for the group off healing loss.

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My problem with Burrow being a defensive for PvE is that any defensive where you can’t attack while using it is lame (i.e. Iceblock without the talent or Aspect of the Turtle) it makes any situation where you have to deal damage to break out of a phase while it pulses damage (like Mistcaller, Tredova, Razageth, Fyrakk, etc) awkward because you can’t use that defensive without griefing your group by not contributing.

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I dont think thats lame really, it doesn’t really grief the group if it means you live instead of die, or you immune a mechanic for the healer instead of take the damage. There are a lot of ways an immunity even without being able to attack can be a positive for your m+ group or raid group, and you can cancel it anyway. Ice block has been used that way for a long time and it has good value.

Also burrow makes you really fast so you can also use it for mobility too if you randomly wanted to. On top of that it does deal damage when you pop out of the ground, 500k+ (can crit) to any target it hits and knocks all of them up so I imagine good pve shamans would use this to immune damage and then immediately pop out to do aoe damage so you dont really lose much damage. Its a really unique, fun immunity. So essentially, burrow has a few ways it can contribute.

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