Reincarnate, as a defensive, is excruciatingly weak. It can only be used when the shaman dies and it returns the shaman to life with only 20% of their maximum health, still leaving the shaman well within one shot range. I cant vouch for other shamans, but I have used Reincarnate thinking its safe just to almost instantly be killed again. In M+ thats a 10 second loss for using a defensive. In Raid that means a battle rez is used on the shaman that has already picked themselves up, when it could (and should) be saved for a tank or healer.
Shamans in battle self revive, compared to the other forms of battle rez, might as well not even be used. For comparison:
- Death Knights Raise Ally - 60% health
- Druids Rebirth - 100% health
- Warlocks Soul Stone - 60% health
- Paladins Intercession - 60% health
- Engineers tinker - 60% health
When the baseline for in battle revives is 60% hp, then there is absolutely zero reason for shaman to get stuck with a 20% self revive especially when Warlocks can soul stone someone before combat even begins.
Buff Reincarnate up to 60% and leave the 30 minute timer on it. In Shadowlands there was an anima power that granted Astral Shift, even when it was on cooldown, to the shaman when Reincarnation was used and that should have been a shaman class talent.
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+1, I agree with this whole post. Definitely something I never thought about or checked into with other classes tbh. I definitely know if I had 60% HP on rez I would have survived a LOT more encounters.
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Definitely needs the health buffed, or the cooldown greatly reduced if they’re going to keep viewing it as a defensive.
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I still fail to see how it could even be classified as a defensive when you have to die to use it. Having to die coupled with a half hour cooldown and the low health percentage it returns you with is just asinine at best. No other class in the game has an ability with a 30 minute cooldown, not even warlocks that soul stone themselves before a fight.
Shaman is such a fun class but its so so squishy and Blizz needs to get out of the mind set of Reincarnate is a defensive. If thats whats stopping the class I enjoy from getting better, proper defensives I’d rather just lose the ability all together.
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racking up repair costs = defensives xDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDD blizzard
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Could not agree more. Reincarnate is wonky and awkward, with the amount of consistent raid/mplus damage. Not to mention fights like Kazzara where if you die in a rift, you don’t even bother reincarnating because insta death.
The Astral shift attached to reincarnate was a great start, but definitly it should be in line with other similar things. 60%. I would say its a 50/50 shot when i use ankh if I get insta gibbed or not. Feels very punishing to use what should be a strong class ability.
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Its crazy how often it happens. I was in an Uldaman last night and ankhed during one of the bosses just to instantly drop dead again because of group wide damage.
10 seconds off the key for me pressing one of my abilities feels bad.
It’s not a new issue but nice to see others bring up this problem from expansion to expansion. The best improvement to our Reincarnation ability is to give use 3-5 sec immunity/untargeted buff so that we can run out of ground damage or bad positioning, in addition to AoE popping off to just kill us again. Hell Blizzard could give that to Battle Rez too to equalize it. But as our Reincarnation is, it’s shouldn’t even be considered a defensive. But a selfish battle rez.
If they changed the reincarnate talent to cause you to revive with 100%hp/mana it would be a far more desirable talent/ability rather than it’s more situational functionality as it presently is implemented.
They could even do a split talent, one gives you 100%hp/mana on revive and the other gives a drastically shorter cooldown / cooldown shortens each time you use a core ability for that spec.
The idea using a defensive results in a time penalty in mythic plus is insane.
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It doesn’t even have to work like Rebirth really, even making it 50% hp would allow the shaman to survive the process of getting back up if they have to use it in some form of lingering damage, such as during the final phase of Sarkareth when the oblivion motes are falling and you suddenly take damage and a stacking dot if to many land.
And it sucks. It feels bad especially if your group barely doesnt time the key. You cant help but wonder “Was it my fault? Was it because I died and died again after using ankh?” Usually when a shaman ankhs, Earth Elemental and Astral Shift are already on CD so we have nothing to stop group wide damage. So depending on the affixes/boss, coming back with 20% of your hp is still a death sentence.
You sort of say it, that when it comes to M+, dying shortly after Reincarnation, is a double penalty on the key timer. On top of looking and feeling bad when you look at total deaths that some of those are BS deaths after Reincarnating.
Wow I can to the shaman fourm to post something exactly similar.
Ankh may need to be reworked entirely - majority of time you ankh and die.
And it is unusable if you die in a fire or standing in a circle of bad.
Perhaps we can have a short 1-3 second damage immunity after Ankh during PvE?
This gives you a chance to move out of bad stuff and healers to top you off.
Or what about a targeting circle we can select up to 5-10 yards away on where we can reincarnate?
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There’s really no way it can be considered a defensive. A defensive is something you use to help prevent death. So it’s a self battle rez that still needs to be buffed. It needs to provide at least one of the following:
- Return you to life with at least 50% health (thanks Bloodseer)
- Provide 3-5s of immunity to all damage (thanks AuntyentĂty)
- Provide a targeting circle that lets you choose the reincarnation location (thanks Repodude)
If it did all three, then a 30 minute cd would be justified. And it could be considered a defensive if viewed through a prism and reversed in a mirror after having gained the ability to see in five dimensions after an electrical storm.
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Having it reset on a boss wipe would be a nice step forward. Then I can actually press it without losing 50K hp for the next 25 minutes. That might be a bit strong though… We could at least improve the HP we get on revival and not tie our 8% hp increase to it being off cooldown.
That feels like low hanging fruit.
FWIW, next patch they are letting us keep the 8% HP while it’s on cooldown
I’m thankful for that at least, but it still doesn’t fix the main issue with the ability in how weak it is and how punishing it can feel to use a “defensive”.
Of course, I agree. I was intending to reply to the person right above me, but forums on mobile are weird
Reincarnate isn’t a defensive, astral shift is a defensive. But yeah, I can’t count how many times I’ve tried to reincarnate only to instantly drop dead because there was a pulse of damage that instantly killed me. The brimming with life talent should’ve been hotfixed it’s borderline useless because you’re punished losing a large amount of your health pool simply for using a core class ability.
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It shouldn’t ding you for time in mythic plus - cheat death doesn’t, and you need to either reincarn at full health or have an invincibility window because in higher keys you usually just die again of there is literally anything going on.