First, I appreciate an actual response.
So that is raiding. Which I did specifically say we could use some help on. There is more to resto shaman than raiding.
There is m+ and there is pvp. And, yes. I know your post was about more than just raw healing numbers. Which actually means the information you posted (raw healing numbers in a raid atmosphere) means less.
The shaman tree is almost universally seen as being well designed and not “bloated”, for example.
Grr, a dos left before we started and in queue. At median of 15k hps, that’s 7,200,000 more healing done in an 8 minute raid boss encounter, using just the evoker/shaman example. I know there is m plus and pvp, but I dps in M plus because I enjoy something different and I have no perspective on pvp this xpac since I don’t do it. As far as bloat, there seems to be a dichotomy of posts with some feeling extreme talent tree bloat and others saying it is just fine.
The thing is, this information drastically changes the perception of the thread.
If you just wanted to make a thread about how resto shaman needs a little bit of help in raiding, I doubt many would disagree.
As far as talent tree bloat, can you describe what you feel is bloated?
One of shaman’s key strengths has been utility. And I feel the tree does great for utility. It allows you to adjust your utility on a per fight, per dungeon, etc basis to always play to your strengths.
We are about to start but quickly my biggest beef is a talent point to get gust of wind that was taken from us due to a class fantasy argument that was made null and void in my opinion with timewarp to mages and evokers, battle rez to evokers and such. We used to be surrounded by 4 totems that buffed the raid now we have to put talents to get totems and I think some should be baseline as the masters of totems and then elements which would reduced what I feel is some bloat in our tree. Gotta run my alt needs gear.
I mean. I was pretty mad about that too. But I am ok with it being in the tree. Its not hard to get to. The only time I feel tight on points to spend is a m+ affix week like this week, where I have to go after poison cleanse totem for all dungeons.
Yeah, but the buff totems were just boring maintenance ones. We still have totems. And yeah, it takes a talent to get them. But with a talent system (instead of what we had before) thats typically how it works.
If we didnt have totems, we’d still have nodes there. The tree wouldnt have less “bloat” in it, it would have different bloat. because all classes had a target to have a certain amount of talent tree choices.
so I quickly went through the healing talent trees for evoker, druid and shaman. if we had unlimited points, you could get every evoker talent with 48 points, druid with 49, and shaman with 50. I realize that all talents are not created equal but they could give us gust of wind for free and remove one point to use elsewhere, or even give us something that currently costs 2 points for one. Just some random thoughts.
Of course he didn’t read your entire post. It was longer than a dicken’s novel.
It was 18 years of pent up frustration. If you don’t want to read a long post, then don’t.
Gotta say Docjenkins I don’t see why you would be disappointed with resto shaman at all.
Its really well designed and its carved out a unique niche among healers in terms of gameplay.
Differences in HPS numbers happen between seasons, that’s tuning. It’s not some existential crisis. Resto shamans are S tier for high m+ right now. Who is the “best” healer is a dumb argument. Its the parser mindset brought to healer which it was never meant to be. Healing is more cooperative than competitive. I regularly top heals, seriously go look at my logs. Look at my mythic Amalgamation pull (spread fight btw) This is bring the player not the class. Sure you can get a Dragon but I will stay alive and do strong consistent healing.
My guild is recruiting another resto shaman. We are 3/9M and we had several nights we had 2 resto shamans healing.
Also a lot of the post seems to be Evoker envy, and not issues with shaman. The expansion where a new class comes out is ALWAYS focused on the new class in terms of story, lore and gameplay.
MoP / Monk - expansion is about Monks and the Mists
WotlK / DK - Obviously the expansion story is focused on the DKs and the ebon blades
Legion / DH - The illidari returned to Azeroth to fight the burning legion.
DF / Evoker - evokers emerge and join the other races of azeroth and discover their heritage
That is how tier works though. Elemental has a stormkeeper bias tier set. Fury warrior has a bias bloodthirst tierset.
Rain and Riptide are our core spells. Calling the tier “useless” is disingenuous. It’s fine.
That’s just tuning. Between Rain and Chain Heal shamans are masters of AoE. Any stacking fight we will perform very strongly. Chain Heal is the only AoE heal without a cooldown. (Sanctify, Green Blossom, Light of Dawn H.P cost, Wild Growth)
Back in my day… 
Anyway I can go on but why bother
Respectfully:
Please consider maybe there is something you’re missing about your class. I recommend you pretend you know nothing about your class/spec and reteach yourself Shaman from the ground up. This advice is not condescension: I had to admit to myself after 12+ years of playing WoW there were things I did not fundamentally understand.
I am mainly a PvPer, and Resto Shaman are basically my counter as Disc. A skilled Resto Shaman in Arena is my worst nightmare. They have WAY better mana management. More crowd control. Incredible healing. The insane amount of control you have over the situation with well time and well placed totems is something I think you’ve overlooked.
Do not give up. Be patient and spend some time purely reading/watching to learn about your class.
Are they regularly a top healer?
I did not play the end of shadowlands, but I don’t think that has been the case.
Ever since early shadowlands and older, shaman were more the low HPS healer, but we were brought for Utility.
Dragonflight so far we have not been a top healer. We were strong toward the end of patch 10.0, but that was very short lived. The beginning of 10.0, no…
10.1 we are the bottom.
It actually hasn’t been an issue for Resto shaman to be low HPS until now. Before we were the “utility” healer. Now, other heal specs have been given more and more utility, and the Evoker pretty much took our niche.
Now being lower on the HPS scale is an issue.
If you only look at shaman in a vacuum with specific tiers of raid healing, then you are right.
We are a worthless spec.
If you ignore pvp and m+. And the tiers where we are great. shrug
So was your writing a post in an open forum to encourage discussion or a “dear diary post” you’d rather people not engage?
It seems like you made more of a blog post as a misguided form of catharsis rather than seeking feedback.
Akston can come across as direct, but he’s not wrong here and tone is pretty hard to communicate/interpret via text.
We were one of the worst M+ specs until this patch…
Excuse me, what?
Yes… in the majority of 10.0 resto shaman were trash in mythic+. Resto Druid and Evoker were dominant, and there was no point in bringing any other healer spec other than those two.
Do you play the game?
For someone who looks like they do a whole lot of playing, you sure do complain a lot.
I think Akston has more than amply clarified their point, and I agree with them. It seems like the majority of this thread is you whining about not being curbstomping top spec of meta, while claiming to not care about meta.
Idk why I found that funny.
I don’t know. If you look at my posts, I don’t see a whole lot of complaining by me. Read them…
I am simply disputing the fact. It is not factual. It is not accurate to say shaman have been top anything for any significant point of time. (I cannot speak for pvp)
That is what I was disputing. No complaining on my end.
Oh, sorry I mixed you and OP up. Pretty easy to do since you’re both whining.
