Good morning. Along with the rest of the community, I am eager to jump into SoD’s next phase. Blackwing Lair is likely my favorite overall Classic raid, and I’m excited to see how the team has chosen to iterate on it in this Season.
As a Restoration Shaman, I am concerned, however, that our T2 Set Bonuses are a little clunky. The TL/DR on this is that the set forces us into Rune options that are not always ideal, and that these bonuses feel awkward to play at best, or are perhaps even suboptimal, limiting experimentation and player expression, at worst. I’ll explain in greater detail below:
2-Piece:
The current 2pc Ten Storms bonus that we’re seeing indicates that our Spell Crits will trigger our Water Shields for free. This is not a bad idea in theory, but in practice, I think there are some issues:
The first is that Shamans have functionally unlimited mana with Shamanistic Rage. This means the mana returns we see from Water Shield are often unnecessary. It is also common for fights to be pretty short, to the extent that mana isn’t much of a concern. Also, healing requirements on many fights (even on Heat 3 Molten Core) are often not especially high, and we find that we have empty GCDs in which to throw out additional damage with Lava Bursts.
This current set bonus pigeon-holes us into Water Shield, which discourages us from being able to contribute to raid DPS, while at the same time, providing a bonus (mana return) that is largely unnecessary in SoD. So we’re giving up a powerful offensive Rune option in exchange for very little.
If you’d like us to use Water Shield, I would suggest the following compromise: The original 10 Storms set granted us +3% Critical Strike w/ Nature Spells. Perhaps a new set bonus for Resto T2 in SoD could be “While your Water Shield is active, your chance to Critically Strike with Nature Spells is increased by 3%”.
This would give us a little bit more of that offensive power we’d be giving up by losing Lava Burst, and also aligns well with the rest of the set bonuses we’re seeing, which incentivize Chain Heal and Chain Lightning (both Nature Spells).
4-Piece:
The current 4pc bonus that we’re seeing for Resto is that our Chain Lightning damage is converted into 100% healing for our Earth Shield target. Again, this sounds okay on paper, but I think it is a little awkward overall:
This forces us to play Earth Shield (and to be fair, of the current Top 100 Resto Shamans worldwide, only 2 of us are playing anything other than Earth Shield at the moment). As I’ve mentioned before, oftentimes we are finding that healing requirements, even in Heat 3 Molten Core, are low enough that we can trade out some of our defensive tools in exchange for more offensive ones. For example, I have been experimenting with Ancestral Guidance lately, and I think it is a lot of fun.
Forcing us to play Earth Shield means we no longer get to experiment like that, and are locked into certain Runic combinations. That’s okay sometimes, but as we pointed out above, we’re already being locked into Water Shield. The current set bonuses force us to play two different Runes, and I personally find that to be a little frustrating because philosophically I believe that SoD is a time for experimentation and finding new / exciting playstyles that may not have existed before.
Additionally, this set bonus is a little clunky if you’re running multiple Resto Shamans in your healing core, particularly on single-tank encounters.
Again, consider looking to the original T2 Shaman set from Vanilla for a better solution. The 3pc 10 Storms used to increase the amount healed by Chain Heal by 30% to targets beyond the first. My suggestion would be to implement this exact same functionality as our 4pc in SoD, and add in some extra damage per Chain Lightning jump, as well. This steps on the toes of our Coherence Rune a little, but it also gives us the option to either run Coherence (in which case our Chain Heals and Chain Lightnings would be doing phenomenal bounces) or to instead run Storm Earth and Fire, which would reduce our Chain Lightning cooldown by 50%, allowing us to throw more damage more often.
Essentially, this solution would provide us with additional options, which would allow for a greater degree of player expression.
6-Piece:
The current 6pc T2 that we’re seeing for Resto is a flat 20% bonus to the effectiveness of both Chain Heal and Chain Lightning. This is largely fine, but I think a more elegant and interesting solution would be to look to Primordial Wave, from the current edition of the game, for inspiration-
Primordial Wave has a modest cooldown, and functions as a Chain Heal that leaves a Riptide on allies it touches if you cast it on friends, or as a Chain Lightning that leaves a Flame Shock on enemies it touches if you cast it on foes. In my opinion, a more interesting 6pc for Resto T2 would be to make it so that “Every X seconds” or “Every Yth cast of” Chain Heal will apply Riptide to all Allies, or Chain Lightning will apply Flame Shock to all Enemies.
This, again, gives us a greater degree of player expression. Rather than both spells simply being 20% better, we still increase their effectiveness by having them apply these HoTs / DoTs, which would then help trigger the updated Lava Surge Rune and synergize with the rest of our updated SoD toolkits in a number of other ways.
Overall, I really like the direction of the set, but I personally find it to be a little clunky at best and perhaps even sub-optimal at worst. I do not like that the Resto T2 set bonuses we’re seeing force us to play a number of Runes, because that discourages experimentation and limits player expression within the game-space.
I hope this feedback finds you well, that I’ve made my points coherently, and that you’ll consider making some changes to our T2 set bonuses before the next phase goes live. Thank you!