Does anyone else feel like Restoration Shamans are starting to fall behind in PvP? In both Solo Shuffle and Blitz, it feels like our healing lacks the impact other healers are receiving through recent buffs.
Here’s a look at the changes for other healers with recent/upcoming class tuning:
Discipline Priest:
Power Word: Radiance healing increased by 20%.
Flash Heal healing increased by 15%.
Premonition of Piety increases healing done by 20% (up from 15%).
Preemptive Care increases Atonement duration by 4 seconds (up from 3 seconds).
Mistweaver Monk:
All healing increased by 6%.
Awakened Jadefire now causes Spinning Crane Kick to transfer 110% of damage done (up from 90%).
Jadefire Teachings now boosts Ancient Teachings by 160% (up from 140%).
Rushing Wind Kick’s damage increased by 150%, and Rushing Winds now increases Renewing Mist healing by 100% during its duration (up from 50%).
Yu’lon’s Whisper healing increased by 400%.
Jade Bond now increases Mastery: Gust of Mist’s healing by 20% (down from 60%).
Restoration Druid: Recently received adjustments, but it’s uncertain if they’ll make a noticeable difference.
Holy Priest: Strong overall, but Discipline still outshines it. The main issue is its mana efficiency.
Meanwhile, Restoration Shaman received a minor buff to Healing Surge and Healing Wave—spells we rarely rely on outside of AS windows or emergency situations.
Is anyone else feeling like Restoration Shaman isn’t getting the right kind of attention, while other healers continue to see substantial, impactful improvements?
I don’t know if RSham is the worst but it feels bad dude. Its healing feels like piss water. You have to blow cooldowns to just heal through heavy sustain damage sometimes. The damage is non-existent, which brings it way down in 2’s. If you fight a disc priest, the disc will pump 30-40 million damage. You just won’t compete with it if they don’t suck.
In DF, I easily got to 1800+ as Resto in SS and 2’s as a mediocre healer with pretty minimal effort. Right now, I’m struggling in 2’s at the 1600-1700 lvl with like a 50-50 record. Every match up is a Disc priest or Hpal. I’ve seen a handful of mw’s, rdruids, rshams and literally no holy priests. It’s 80%+ disc and hpal.
The Disc buffs are ridiculous imo. Disc is already strong. It’s obvious at this point they’re playing disc priest and hpal’s at blizz, so they’re juicing them to the gills. I think it’s because they balance the game around PvE and Rsham is strong in pve, especially in M+. Some say they’re overpowered in M+ but idk.
In PvP they feel like trash. RSham needs more damage AND more healing. I wouldn’t mind having a bit better mobility or defensives either. Like making burrow baseline and improving ghost wolf.
-Increase damage on lava burst…by ALOT. It hits like absolute piss rn.
Yeah the biggest offender right now is how bad rsham damage is.
Rsham has mediocre to decent heals, great utility, and terrible damage.
This is unacceptable in pvp. The win condition is a gamble and it feels so pigeonholed to rely on your opponent being bad instead of winning the game by playing well.
Lava burst is so weak for how long it takes to cast and lava surge is such a rare proc rate. Rsham is global starved because it must run high mastery low haste to have any healing throughput which means no time to put up flame shocks. Basically if you managed to get flame shocks up, your opponent is playing bad and not dealing enough pressure.
Lava burst could honestly receive a 100% buff and it would be fair since it’s an opportunistic spell that does not directly convert into healing (master of the elements being clunky and a low duration buff, why is it not permanent??). It also requires the target to have flame shock up - another prerequisite!
Imo, it’s not that Shaman isn’t good or viable, its that most people are playing with Shaman like they have an Hpal, MW or Disc on their team and are invincible and their healer can do something to save them at any time. Almost every one of my losses has nothing to do with the strength of the enemy healing class, and more to do with the lack of awareness or game knowledge of my partners. Heck, a vast majority of my Solo losses could have been different solely if my partners were not running away from me or our 3rd so that I could simply link them and save them.
Disc did not need any buffs, but I am glad the Shaman buffs weren’t to something like Riptide or Healing Stream/Tide and encouraging boring gameplay that is just Riptide spam. Casted Heals don’t move health bars as well as they should, and Riptide/Healing Tide is too much of our overall healing.
I am hopeful as mastery scales up, Shaman will feel better but unfortunately, no amount of healing output would be saving my partners in the situations they’re dying.
ya i mainly play 2s and i can say it feels absolutely miserable, to the point where i dont even want to play it anymore. literally watch disc, holy, pres, and now fistweavers again doing 40+million damage in a game while i barely crack 5mil. our healing can struggle though basic sustained damage. not having fun at all
That speaks to a deep design problem with the class. Basically you’re saying that it is not intuitive to interact with a shaman healer as opposed to others.
I agree!
Shaman viability hinges on being overtuned on its reliable heals like riptide or healing stream or healing tide, so that its unreliable heals like link or earthen are acceptable to not pull off. That feels so bad.
The class needs a rework in pvp, full stop. I won’t offer game design suggestions, but my feedback is that teammates in the heat of battle will outright work against their friendly resto shaman healer. And i don’t blame them.
honestly a massive help would be reworking earthen wall to not require people to stand in it. lower the effect of it by 10-20% and just apply the totem to the party and not the area
That’s not really what I was implying, if anything, the other healers are overtuned and their kits reward bad gameplay. Shaman has basically the same kit, except now more, as it did in the times it has been strong.
I think the tuning changes they made are good for Shaman, or at least a step in the right direction.
My point was more toward the fact that you’re struggling likely because your teammates don’t have the understanding or awareness to be playing around your kit effectively or you’re not using it effectively, or unfortunately, both.
I personally would not want to see changes to Shaman’s kits except in ways that would probably make it more challenging to be effective, but none of that matters if other healers can still make numerous mistakes and not be punished.
I did 2s about a week after the season started in greens and had like an 80% w/l at MMR that was near the top of ladder at the time, with some random from LFG. Not every class should have the same capabilities and I can guarantee not all of your losses are because of the class your enemy chose.
1 ancestral awakening 2 point heal for lest 4% in pvp why why 2 point make 1 point or make to heal more
2 as pvp we don’t use healing rain why we need to pick mandatory please change position from deluge to healing rain
3 in pvp our heal need to be buff a lot
4 Master of the elements is good talent why not to make flame shock also increase the heal in riptide doc by 5% for each riptide apply. 15% cap.
5 Undercurrent can be 1 point
6 Earthen wall totems can be 1.5 min but make the totem take more damages. fix visualization of the totem so people don’t run from the totem.
I’ve been using totemic recently and according to murlok io so have alot of shamans in pvp. The new chain heal talent buffs riptide like you suggest with Master of the Elements.
Healing wave needs a HUGE buff. Why does it only do 10,000 more healing than healing surge? The mana cost is lower but the cast time is much longer. I would love to see this get a substantial buff.
Things change pretty fast. Rsham felt decent at start of season. I started off at 13-0 in 2’s and it felt great. I stopped playing for a month(went to enhancement), and it feels noticeably worse. It does no damage, which is important in 2’s at this stage.
I disagree, I think Resto shaman’s damage has nothing to do with its viability currently. There are things shamans can do that other healers cannot do and its ok if other healers like Disc can do more damage than you.