Overall, a bit disappointed, but not surprised. Wordy overview from dipstick incoming.
Totemic Tree is up now: Totemic Hero Talents - Restoration Shaman.
I want to know other Resto Shams breakdown of it as well. Here’s mine:
- Surging Totem: 6.5/10 - Not my preferred reform for Healing Rains, but it is something. It’s instant cast, benefits from increased radius, and can be moved around with totemic Projection. An improvement over its current iteration, I hope it’s modified to work in pvp. As someone who has whined on these forums for awhile about healing rain, I do see it as a slight win.
2a. Totemic Rebound: 5/10: Eh…it’s alright. Little extra boost to health. Not great but not bad. Adds more passive healing which helps because the core Rsham healing is still hardcasts.
2b. Dual Node - 1) Amplification Core: 5/10 - Uhh…fine whatever. Relatively unremarkable like the most other parts of the hero tree.
- Oversurge: 5.5/10 - Not bad, not really good either. With ascendance and deeply rooted elements procs, it may be noticeable. I wish they had an additional talent to reduce Ascendance by 30-45 seconds instead of having us put 3 points into earthliving(bad talent tree layout) or to increase the chance of riptide proccing ascendance through deeply rooted elements(to reiterate, why is Earthliving 3 points in the bottom of tree, what even is this??!?)
2c. Lively Totems: 6.5/10 - Pretty decent. Getting an instant chain heal when dropping certain totems improves passive healing. Especially with healing Stream, as you drop these frequently. I think the passive heals offered in this tree will add up.
3a. Dual Node- 1) Oversized Totems: 6.5/10 - Also pretty decent. The 15% increased radius is solid. The 30% increased hp of totems is lacking. For a Spec so heavily based around and reliant on totems, it should be more like 50% + improved hp. There so fragile right now, I don’t know how much 30% more hp will actually help.
- Swift Recall: 4/10 - Could just be mediocre, but based on the way I’m understanding it, it’s pretty empty/mehhhh. It reduces cooldown by 5 seconds of control totems(Tremor, Earthgrab, capacitor), but only once every 20 seconds for each totem…so basically it’s just a 5 second reduction in CD for a few totems. How many would take this over Oversized totems?
3b. Wind Barrier: 7/10 - Could be being overly optimistic, but this seems pretty good. Resto Shams struggle with mobility so adding passive abilities to make us a bit tankier will help.
3c. Reactivity: 6.5/10 - Pretty decent. Again, it’s not world breaking, but all these little passive heals in the Totemic tree will add up.
4a. Imbuement Mastery: 1/10 - I don’t know if this is supposed to be a joke or not. Absolute waste of a node. Earthingliving, an ability that is constantly proccing and refreshes its duration when procced, lasting another 6 seconds…? Why even put this in here? Please, Please, Please…come up with something better then this.
4b. Dual Node- 1) Pulse Capacitor: 7/10 - 25% increased healing for surge totem is pretty substantial when surge totem already improves healing rain by 30%.
- Tidecaller’s Guard: 5/10 - Not terrible, but also lackluster.
Note: I think this idea is better for a shield imbue → Tidecallers Guard(Applied to shield): “When you take damage, you have a chance to gain a stack of Tidecaller Guard, stacks up to 5 times. Each stack of tidecaller’s guard reduces the cast time of your next heal by 10%.” It’s basically just Resto sham’s own version of maelstrom weapon(it’s in regular Shaman tree already), but it works better as a shield imbue because when is a shaman gonna start whacking people for maelstrom stacks?
4c. Dual node - 1) Totemic Coordination: 6/10 - Solid. Again, improves passive healing. Adds up.
- Earth Surge: 7/10- Solid. Earth Shield increases healing on target by 20%, Riptide and Healing Rain w/Deluge increases healing, Unleash Life, and now this. Adds up and makes a difference.
- Capstone - Swirling Elements: 7.5/10 - Seems Good. Definitely seems like it would have a nice synergy with other abilities. Between reduced cast time for air, to duplicating a heal with water, to increasing Earthliving HoT with chain heal for earth, it has a good “flow” to it. A combination of increased efficiency and healing.
Overall Rating: 6.5. Could go to to 7+ when I try it out or down to a 2 and lead me to quit wow and start drinking again.
Notes - This is just based off of first glance. We won’t know until deeper into beta. There’s some lackluster stuff and also a couple of real stinkers( I’M LOOKING AT YOU IMBUEMASTERY! FRIG OFF!). Overall, I think it adds a lot of passive healing that Resto Shaman needs. It gets rough trying to rely on hardcasting healing wave and surge. A lot of this stuff is instant cast and has passive effects that contribute to our sustain healing.
From what I see so far you get: Improved Healing Rain that procs every 5 secs and improves other abilities through cast time reduction, duplicate healing and improved HoT efficacy. Also, chain heals off Healing Stream/Tide Totem, 1/2 heals from Healing Stream after using healing ability, and additional chain heal bounce to most wounded teammate. So chain heal “double dips”. There’s more but that’s the jist of it. It honestly doesn’t seem bad overall, but time will tell.
Do we need a bit more in the mobility department? For sure. Resto Sham is dead in the water mobility wise in the current meta. I wish there was something for improved mobility( I dunno, maybe replace…IMBUE MASTERY WITH A MOBLITY TALENT). Maybe they’ll do something with regular Shaman tree because all 3 specs like mobility