Since we’re removing Flash of Lightning CD, I think we need to take the opportunity to rectify a failing of the Shaman class design that’s being going on for well over a decade now.
Shamans have absolutely garbage tier defensive capabilities. Even with CDR elemental shamans still aren’t as good as Mages/Rogue/Warlocks/DKs/Paladins etc in defensive power, without CDR they an absolutely terrible defensive class. It’s been utterly nonsensical since the introduction of Mythic Plus. And any nonsense talk about “hybrid healing” is just that, nonsense. It’s a complete nonfactor in any challenging content in this game. Furthermore, Paladins clearly don’t play by those rules while being one of the tankiest classes in the game.
Astral Shift needs to have a baseline 1.5 min CD.
Earth Elemental needs to have a 3 min baseline CD.
Stone Bulwark needs to have a baseline 2 min baseline CD AND be reset w/ Totemic Recall.
Reincarnation needs to have it’s CD reduced to a baseline of 20 minutes. Other classes “cheat death” mechanics are are wildly shorter CDs (6min for rogue, 5min for mage).
Even these changes probably won’t bring us inline with other classes, and definitely won’t bring us in line with Mages or Rogues. That’s how dogwater our defensives are. This has been a ridiculous oversite for nearly two decades now. It needs to be fixed.
unlike either of these classes, Shaman is designed in mind that they have multiple sources of self-healing (spamming healing surge, but also totem, etc)
Not to say shaman is good at surviving–its’ definitely not–but that its’ more of a tuning question than a “redesign” question. Astral Shift is one of the strongest CDR defensives in the game outside of its’ cooldown.
Shaman offhealing is absolute garbage the same as any other DPS specs “self healing” and plays next to zero role in any challenging content (raid or M+).
Paladins don’t pay this supposed toll for their healing ability, they are one of the strongest defensive classes in the game regardless of spec. Priest have a spammable DR and a short CD shield, plus their DPS specs have significantly baked in healing just from doing damage. There is no justification for Shaman having the atrocious defensive ability they currently have.
Paladins have the best range of any melee class in the game. They are functionally a midrange kit. Furthermore paladins are more mobile than Shaman almost universally (with the exception of Enhancement) because all their specs heavily rely on instant casts. Do you even play either of those classes?
I suggest you go read through shadow priests spell list.
I think the issue is it’s hard to tune around a spamable heal. Surge is good for Enh because of instant and maelstrom buffs.
For Ele it should be changed. The current surge works just like a healer/Resto spell which doesn’t work on a DPS in 2024. It’s weak and/or you need to spend many GCDs casting it.
For Ele surge should be Instant, heal big (30%, Crit to 60%), have 2 charges, CD of like 15 sec per charge.
That would be a real “hybrid” healing defensive in line with abilities like Victory Rush. Also group utility.
I wouldn’t want defensives to be the same for every class, but we are getting to the point where it’s obvious that specific types of defensives are better than others for high end content, and some classes have them and others don’t.
They need to do a defensive passive plus active complete pass for all classes and figure out how they want to challenge players survival in high end.
Hybrid heals are horribly undertuned with the exception of ret paladins and enhancement shaman with MSW stacks.
The other hybrids have heals that are not worth the GCD or risk of gettting interrupted casting.
Ele shaman healing surge heals for like 15% health and balance druid’s regrowth for an even worse 9-10% health.
When aoe ticks are doing 30%+ of your health, casting 5 regrowtha for 7.5 seconds straight to heal up a 2 ticks worth of damage when other classes have strong % ho based heals or stronger more frequent defensives is a huge defensive gap.
If you play cataclysm timewalking you’ll see hybrid heals healing for 25-30% health. They just scale very poorly into the high levels, Blizzard should fix that.
Remember, flash heals are not free. You sacrifice DPS to cast them, and are stationary in the meantime.
Agreed. Hybrid casted heals should honestly never be included in evaluation of a defensive kit. Hybrid heals should be counted instead as group utility. Similar to a warriors intervene or a rogues aoe blind that reduces damage done by the mobs.
Being able to chain cast heals on your team has value. But not as a personal survival tool which you can use to stay alive while dealing damage.
If Blizzard wants to count hybrid dps healing as a defensive then it needs to be made a more viable option that doesn’t tax your dps nearly as much. Most hybrid dps not only lose the globals casting the heals, but they also lose a resource that they need to deal damage such as holy power or maelstrom weapon stacks. It kills your damage and that’s not what a proper defensive ability should do.