I want to take a moment, in the context of the shaman rework, to express my fear that Resto Shaman is shifting away from my preferred playstyle. This is going to be a long walk through through the last 3 expansions to illustrate my point.
So first I’ll define what I mean when I say “Battle Healer” this is a healer where you are ACTIVELY making choices between healing and damage. So a Battle Healer will only achieve roughly 60-80% of a standard healer’s HPS; and around 30-50% of a standard damage dealers DPS. The skill expression comes in with balancing time spent dealing damage and time spent healing. Knowing how low your party can dip while you damage, and how quickly you can burst them back up. Efficiency of mana is secondary, and often a cost of this playstyle. The skill floor is a bit higher for this playstyle, due to the added buttons and extra cognitive load.
Tell tale signs that a spec is performing well as a “Battle Healer” are, of course, strong damage spells; and strong recovery spells that can quickly recoup downtime. Also, good burst windows, and payoff for “weaving” damage into healing are the options that make this playstyle fun and skill-expressive.
The “Battle Healer” is contrasted in two ways both other healers: Firstly, by what I call “Healing Purists” which are focusing on efficiency of healing and economy resources - who care little for damage. Secondly by “Passive Damage” which is simply a consequence of the healer’s normal healing kit. I do not feel that anyone should be forced to play a Battle Healer, and my goal is to outline how this balance was achieved in the past. So here we go!
Battle for Azeroth:
[Igneous Potential] (Passive Azurite Power)
Your Lava Burst deals additional damage, and your Lava Surge chance is increased to 23%
[Natural Harmony] (Passive Azurite Power)
Dealing Fire damage grants Critical Strike for 12 sec. Dealing Frost damage grants Mastery for 12 sec. Dealing Nature damage grants Haste for 12 sec.
There were a few other “Your Damaging Spells…” Style Azurite powers available to RESTO like: Overwhelming Power, Unstable Flames, and Gutripper. And there were items Like Helm of Deep Despair, that would allow you to take IP, Harmony, and Unstable Flames! It was a 'Battle Healer’s dream piece!
Additionally you had options in the Heart of Azeroth system for choosing modal damage as your option.
[The Crucible of Flame] (Active - Major HoA Power, 2 charges 30 second CD)
Blast your target with a ball of concentrated flame, dealing Fire damage to an enemy or healing an ally, then burn the target for an additional 75% of the damage or healing done over 6 sec. Each cast of Concentrated Flame deals 100% increased damage or healing. This bonus resets after every third cast.
With this build, we set the precedent for the ‘Battle Healer’ Shaman. Igneous Potential allowed you to weave extremely powerful Lavabursts into your main rotation. It allowed for skill expression through both keeping up your Flameshocks, and for choosing how to best aim your Crucible of Flames. Using Crucible for damage could leave without your most powerful instant spot-heal (this was when Riptide was very weak). Taking these Az powers were a completely optional trade-off. If this playstyle didn’t suit you, and you wanted to be a RShaman Healing Purist, there were numerous other options in both the Azurite and HoA systems that allowed you to focus on Healing Throughput.
Shadowlands:
[Vesper Totem] (Kyrian Active, 1 min CD)
Summon a totem at the target location for 30 sec. Your next 3 damage spells or abilities will cause the totem to radiate Arcane damage to up to 6 enemies near the totem, and your next 3 healing spells will heal up to 6 allies near the totem.
[Unity] (Kyrian Passive Legendary Power)
When 3 charges of Vesper Totem are consumed, Vesper Totem will radiate a 15 yd burst of Arcane damage and healing.
[Chains of Devastation] (Passive, Legendary Power)
Casting Chain Heal makes your next Chain Lightning instant cast and deal 50% increased damage. Casting Chain Lightning makes your next Chain Heal instant cast
This combination set up a really interesting and fun playstyle, which paired so well with 9.2 set bonus which caused your primary totems to cast an instant chain heal that would proc Chains of Dev. So your opening rotation was: Drop Vesper in the pack, Drop Cloudburst (proc a free chain heal, setting up an instant Chain Lighting), CL, CH, CL, CH → Trigger the burst from Unity. This would cause a huge burst opener in large pulls that also simultaneously kept the party at full HP. To me, this was the pinnacle of Battle Healer play! Once double legendary was unlocked, I had so much fun playing Chain Dev + Unity on Vesper.
[Chain Harvest] (Active, 1.5 Min CD baseline)
Send a wave of anima at the target, which then jumps to additional nearby targets. Deals Shadow damage to up to 5 enemies, and restores health to up to 5 allies. For each target critically struck, the cooldown of Chain Harvest is reduced by 5 sec.
[Unity] (Passive Venthyr)
Up to 5 friendly targets healed by Chain Harvest will have Riptide cast on them. Up to 5 enemy targets damaged by Chain Harvest will have Flame Shock cast on them. Flame Shock critical strikes reduce the cooldown of Chain Harvest by 1.0 sec.
Chain Harvest when combined with Unity was another very fun and rewarding playstyle, especially for crit-stacking gear builds late in the season. One could argue that Harvest was largely 'passive damage, but the devil was in the Cooldown. Chain Harvest which would be used either for a huge burst of damage or could be held back and used as a significant healing CD. Knowing when you could push Harvest as damage and when you had to bank your Harvest for healing was critical for playing Venthyr well. This was compounded by it’s variable Cooldown. There was a lot of interplay between spreading shocks, instant Lavaburst procs, and automatic crits when burst hit a shocked target. The result was that weaving damage would reduce your Harvest CD significant more than if you were just full-time healing.
Those were my two Covenants to play in SL. I played both regularly, and swapped them based on M+ Requirements (Especially when we needed a Kyrian/Venthyr). I never really played PWave or Night Fae on my shaman in BFA. But for healing purists, some options existed that were more straight-forwardly focused healing throughput - though all healer damage was pretty wild in late Shadowlands. I’ll concede that SL could have used maybe a few more healing pure options. But for players like me, SL was the golden age of healing.
Dragonflight:
[Stormkeeper] + [Master of the Elements] give another interesting burst window at the start of the fight. DF’s Master of the Elements working on any nature spell makes much more interesting decisions and skill expression.
Pre-charging Stormkeeper and Pre-Casting a Lavaburst on the pull, you can set up a nice LB, CL, LB, CL sequence at the start of the fight to get some burst in before damage starts. It can also be combined with Astral Guidance if you want to use this damage combo mid-fight without losing healing throughput. Master of the Elements harkens back to BFA’s Triple-IP Lava-burst weaving. Again, skill is expressed through Flame Shock maintenance and good MOTE proc tracking.
Late in DF, PWave was redesigned for Resto to no longer be able to target enemies. This was the first major step towards abandoning the Battle Healer design entirely…
The War Within Beta:
[Acid Rain] is nice damage, but also falls squarely into the ‘Passive Damage’ camp. Acid Raid requires no consideration and trade-off other than a single talent point investment.
TWW’s Master of the Elements redesign is a further step away from this playstyle. Taking away all interesting choices to be made, and turning it into a standard HPS/throughput talent that interacts solely with Healing Surge. It’s just much more boring and binary.
All these changes are very disappointing for me a long time Shaman Battle Healer. I respect that healing needs a ‘less steep’ learning curve for newer Healers. The genius of Dragonflight talent system was that it allows ‘Healing Purists’ and New players alike to completely ignore the more damage focused playstyles. While also giving us Battle Healers the ability to Opt-In to a very fun and rewarding playstyle.
Please reconsider the path Resto Shaman are on. Thanks for Reading!