The spec is undercooked and over pruned. Nothing about alpha shaman looks appealing. Hell the fact that the degen healing wave (current) raid playstyle is getting rolled over into 12.0 is enough for me to shelve the spec. Heck even this tier I was so beyond bored in raids, I dropped this toon to go back to tanking/dps.
It’s literally a 3 button healer. The skill ceiling is now floor level. You walk into the room and get brain damage because your head slams into the roof. Resto Shaman’s have never been considered “hard” or intensive, but it currently makes Ret Paladin and BM hunter look difficult (and way more fun) in comparison.
A complete screw up.
6 Likes
2 days before the alpha drop I was talking to a good friend.
“i cant wait until midnight. r sham raid healing is so horrible right now. i just want to move on from it”
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As was pointed out earlier, one of the most disappointing things about midnight resto is that farseer is just DOA. The spec is being reduced to just 5 basic healing spells, with farseer having almost no interactions or feedback loops with those spells to make it interesting, while totemic heavily buffs healing rain and HST, and also adds free chain heals to your casts of hst/stormstream. Farseer simply has no way to match that. CBT used to help fill that gap, but with its removal, it will now severely lag totemic.
On a secondary note, I am hoping they greatly increase the damage from flame shock and lava burst. I am a big fan of MotE weaving, it gave a healing benefit from doing dps, which is one of my favorite healer gameplay loops. Without that benefit, the damage these spells do is insufficient to bother casting them, better to just simplify and use nothing but lightning/chain lightning. As the talent tree is currently constructed, I don’t even intend to talent lava burst, I’d rather spend the point elsewhere. That’s a little sad when I remember weaving in lava surges and flame shocks while progging on heroic LK or KJ.
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I love th changes.
Spam chain heal isn’t gameplay and hasn’t been fun. I’ve been playing whispering waves with riptide slot machine and it’s a lot of fun. The HPS is high and it beats water beams flat out.
so you dont like spamming chain heal, rather you would prefer to spam healing wave??
be serious
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I’m not certain this is a serious post, but just in case it is, there’s a couple of points I need to make.
First, the whirling waves build that you say you enjoy is heavily dependent on CBT for dealing with burst damage. CBT is gone. It also relies heavily on a feedback loop where you cast more healing waves to get more ancestors to get more riptides which then allow you to hit more people with the copied healing from your healing waves. This loop is also gone in Midnight via the removal of undulation. So the iteration of resto shaman that you say you enjoy is dead in Midnight anyways.
Secondly, no current resto shaman build spams chain heal. It’s prohibitively expensive on mana. There’s also no chance this will be the build in Midnight. In fact, I can’t remember the last tier where you spammed chain heal. If it comes down to brass tacks, you wind up spamming two spells for 90% of your casts when playing whirling waves. I can’t see why spamming one spell is better than spamming another spell, it’s unengaging and boring gameplay either way.
Thirdly, this thread is about upcoming changes to the spec in Midnight. You haven’t actually commented on that at all, just said that you like whirling waves more than chain heal builds. That’s fine, but I’m hoping that active commentary in these and other threads in the coming months will allow Blizz to make some course corrections to help salvage the spec a little. I’m not concerned about the numbers, I’m sure Blizz will tune things appropriately, I just don’t want to be so bored I quit playing.
6 Likes
Same here.
I love the variety of tools resto has to offer, making it one of the most fun healers in pvp imo.
What they’re doing to the spec in midnight is a damn crime, and it doesn’t look like they’re listening to any feedback as they continue to double down on their horrible ideas for the classes.
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You read my mind! Lots of other healer specs benefit from doing damage. Judgment for Hpal, Atonement for Disc, Blooming Infusion for KotG Resto druid, Fistweaving for MW, Living flame/fire breath for Pres, even Chastise procs Divine Image for Holy Priest… there’s tons of other examples as well. What does Shaman have? Acid rain is just passive damage so there’s not really any positive feedback loop for using it, cuz you’re supposed to just use your healing rain anyway. Flame Shock does pitiful damage even with high dot uptime. What is the point of Farseer having extra LB charges, increased LB damage, reduced LB cast time, and increased Lava Surge proc rate if it’s detrimental to healing to cast it? Especially when other healers healing capabilities are enhanced by doing damage? Just some food for thought, either Rsham follows suit, or they need to re-imagine healer damage overall.
1 Like
It makes me sad even seeing the participation in the shaman class forums. I’ve been monitoring the different classes and it seems dh and shaman have the least activity.
It doesn’t feel like anyone really “mains” shaman and only plays it when it is fotm. I don’t expect to get positive change with little participation.
Paladins get whatever they want because they are the most played class
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I’m a shaman main. I don’t play PTR thus I have nothing to complain about.
Wave, riptide, HST, ext. Chain heal is stupid.
You press out your riptides as needed. Use wave as needed. And use HST. It’s beautiful. Riptide probs ascendance and I get some huge heals and easy raid topoff at any time.
Pop as enhance and it’s just GG.
I’ve posted on these forums for years and I almost entirely certain a developer has never once read one of my post.
1 Like
I am happy to agree with the changes and direction so far. Shaman, in general, had way too many situational buttons as well as too many talents that were needed to make the core resto spells feel powerful. Additionally, resto has been moving in a direction where (depending on hero spec) some core talents aren’t even used/are skipped because of how crazy modifiers in the spec have become. Farseer is a good example of this right now. The popular raid build has shaman not use healing rain or chain heal, two spells that have been core to shaman for over 15 years - this feels terrible to me.
I also strongly agree with the removal of cloudburst totem and unleash life. I read that CBT was this skill expression button, and while I agree there is some skill involved, the totem can mostly be used on CD for decent effectiveness. In my opinion, there is no distinction between CBT and healing stream totem with this fact in mind. I’d much more prefer HST because the healing will (generally) be effective, instead of setting up a CBT payout, but none of it heals due to your co-healers.
As for unleash life - I strongly dislike spells that exist purely to buff the next one. For one, if a button like this exists, it means the spells that are buffed have to be weaker to accomodate. Unleash life isn’t going to take an already strong spell and super-charge it, especially with the short cooldown it has. Secondly, the button does nothing on its own. Even though it has a small initial heal, has anyone ever really used it for the targetted healing component? I would guess very few have - which would mean it is used solely to buff the next spell cast. Why should I need to press 1 GCD before my strong heal just to feel like it should be powerful?
There is one change I am not thrilled about, and that is the loss of tidebringer. I could do without the cast time reduction, but the increased jump was very helpful in m+ and raid. I saw they buffed the default jump distance from 15 > 20 yards, but I would like tidebringer to return as a QoL choice.
Unleash life was in an odd position. Blizzard turned it into the default trigger for your ancestor(farseer) if you weren’t casting enough healing waves/surges to justify using undulation, most likely in keys. The problem with getting rid of undulation or unleash life as the trigger for your ancestor, and tying it to hst, is that you now have no way to proc the ancestor if there’s no damage to heal and you don’t want to waste your totem. Pretty frequently, I’d use unleash life as a small st heal on someone in the group, just to proc the ancestor so I could do some dps with it when there wasn’t any significant healing events upcoming. Now, you either waste your hst, or sit there with your thumb up your butt doing nothing while you wait for something to happen. They need to pick a different trigger for the ancestor.
The removal of cbt is a different issue. Farseer now has no way to respond to smaller damage events outside of the two major cd’s. They need something, or they are going to have a hard time with fights that have shorter healing cycles, like every 30 secs or something. Totemic has always used hst, so the loss of cbt is irrelevant for them.
And yes, the tidebringer loss is low key a big hit to the entire spec, its one of those oddball spells you don’t miss until it’s gone. I’m not looking forward to having to position myslef between melee and the ranged dps too dense to stand closer than 20 yards when in a group with a resto shaman.
3 Likes
Ive said in other threads I have no issue getting rid of the modifier talents. those need to be pruned. What doesnt need to be pruned is:
Healing Surge (this is a maybe)
Earthen Wall Totem
Stonebulwark Totem
HTT and Acensdance becoming a choice node.
Thunderstorm
If you want to complain about spells that have been core to shaman for 15 years, I wanna see that same energy for the talents above.
The choice node of ascendance and htt especially hurts in pvp. Totems can essentially be 1-shot, so I am going to waste a talent choice on my biggest cooldown to be 1-shot? Totems need to be invulnerable. None of the other healers are losing 2 3-minute cooldowns like shaman. Shaman in pvp will not be good with these changes.
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An epileptic 5 year old could play this spec now.
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Healing Surge is a spell that I am pretty ambivalent about. When I started healing as a shaman, shaman had lesser healing wave, healing wave, and greater healing wave. The three spells all served the same ST healing niche, but at different speeds, costs, and strengths. At the end of the day, the spell most chosen was the one thast was the fastest and worth the cost. In retail right now, depending on the modifiers and mana problems, the right play is to pick one to cast when needed, and to completely ignore the other. There was a time this expansion where pressing Healing Surge was pointless, which is why blizzard buffed it. So - in a world without modifiers for it, is it really needed? Hard to say without having content to test it with.
When it comes to core shaman spells, EWT and SBT don’t fall in to that category. Those totems have either existed in a completely different form or were non-existent during the time I played. I also feel like neither were really impactful when using them. EWT is more often a pad healing spell than one that is going to make any real difference. SBT is a newer addition, and the extra defensives was nice, but in a world where healing/damage intake is slowed down - is it needed?
Thunderstorm I will give you is a core spell, but for Elemental only. It is only since DF that Thunderstorm was made available to the other shaman specs. This going back to Ele is fine for me, as Resto already has a variety of utility through totems.
Ascendance and HTT being on a choice node is also fine with me. Moving away from the healing profiles we have now, we don’t need a strong burst heal, and a strong consist heal CD. If a fight has a requirement, I think this is a good choice node for that.
Now for PVP - as a previous rated pvp player, this is an area where I really agree with you. Totems have always sucked in pvp with their health and being able to be one-shot. I think PVP needs its own set of modifiers, along with some extra options that fit the pvp playstyle. This is where the pvp talents are supposed to shine, so they either need to allow more pvp talents, or adjust the current ones to be useable and impactful.
Going to say if they want farseer to be viable they better make the 3 new talents (that are yet to be announced) pretty significant, otherwise totemic will be the only viable hero tree for resto.
The loss of ancestors is a significant negative change, with HST being a 20 second cooldown (with talents) that’s a big loss compared to 15 seconds from Unleash Life or Undulation. It would generally work out to at least 1 less ancestor each minute on an extended fight with a weak RNG of producing a free buffed HST. The easiest way I could see this being fixed would be to up the proc rate on the apex talent from 10% chance proc off riptide to like 20%+ chance for farseer. But from what I’ve seen hero talents don’t directly interact with apex talents for any other classes / specs so it’s unlikely this will happen.
The other suggestion I would have would be to change the apex talent from just riptide casts proccing to having it be able to proc from the HoT as well (even if at a reduced chance).
I guess we will see what they do with the remaining farseer talents before we know for sure though.
Annoyed as hell. Keep thunderstorm, keep CBT, add more ancestor procs and shorten cd if they’re going to be manual. Overall proposed changes are bad. This season’s HW riptide build was a warning for bad decision making to come tbh.
The change note that says the equivalent of “gameplay engagement for healers exists already in the form of picking who has low health” is beyond hilarious. According to that, fun comes from clicking on which bar has least color. No way someone who heals would write something so mind numbingly reductive? That is the BARE MINIMUM part of healing and should never be used as an excuse for complexity reduction.
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The new farseer talents were added last week. They’re pretty uninteresting and negligible as far as gameplay/feel. Under current alpha playstyle, ancestors would have to be tuned INSANELY high to even compare to totemic. Especially since ancestors are tied to HST.
The problems with farseer are also tied to the apex talents. The apex talents proc a super HST that is also not proc’d often (<1 a minute currently) but also can just proc at a time you might need to hold it. If you need to hold it then you’re not having ancestors come out, and you’re just falling behind. If you rip the super HST at a bad time just for ancestors, you could also just be falling behind. Currently the amount of ancestors is SUUUUPER low compared to retail because of being tied to HST and not Undulation/UL.
Not to mention the apex talents being tied to HST vastly favors Totemic because you can just rip those whenever you need a Chain Heal. They also just do way more healing in Totemic because of how the hero spec operates.
I think resto shaman on alpha needs a rework of the spec talent tree and some interesting things given back to us, or brand new interesting things. Apex talents included; having them focused around HST is a BAD design imo, especially on a very RNG proc basis. If they wanted to keep the same principle of “proc a big heal button,” I say change it to be Chain Heal centric. Have the middle apex increase the range of chain heal jumps, and have the super button be called something cool like Chain Harvest. 
Simple is fine, I’m not against the pruning, but they went too far. Take resto shaman in raid right now. It’s spread riptide, use CBT decently well, and spam healing wave. It’s incredibly simple and it was fun for a minute, but now I’m bored out of my mind. However, resto on alpha is even more simple, it has 4 buttons that don’t really interact with each other, and don’t form any meaningful/fun rotation. There’s little to no skill expression. There’s also an insane amount of passive healing that you don’t really feel like you even contribute to doing, which to me is not engaging. Maybe it is to some but, I think this spec needs a rework from what’s on alpha.