So the restoration shaman tier set bonuses have been posted and there has been voice for concern in the Shaman Discord over them, the common sentiment being they do not impact the current gameplay for a shaman at all which heavily revolves around riptide and chain healing into riptide targets.
I could break down each and make an essay over it but to speed things up i’m just going to try and offer short and simple sentiments.
Two Piece Set Bonus - Improve a rune which impacts our regular healing rotation. Priests see an improvement to CoH and Penance as an example. Give Shamans improved Tidal Waves % numbers. Or Overload % to proc number. Or Coherence # of bounces or bounce range. Earth Shield is such a small component of our healing profile, i’ll see that it has dropped off and just not care because I have more impact by simply continuing my chains and ignoring it.
Four Piece Set Bonus - I think this goes for all healing specs, but a “dps increase” on single target healing abilities just looks like an empty set bonus. I don’t think a priest wants to cast Flash Heal over Circle of Healing. Regeneration over Mass Regeneration. Lesser Healing Wave over Chain Heal. Rejuvenation over Wild Growth. Just move these to the AoE counter part so it feels like it is doing something, there are so few worlds where we are casting a single target heal on a dps.
Six Piece Set Bonus - I am kind of surprised to see this flat 20% damage reduction on shaman/paladin tier. My thoughts depend solely on the difficulty of the content, but my concern is that it heavily emphasises a raid bringing 1 for the main tank if the raid difficulty scaling is based around having this buff. In the same way that raid difficulty has been balanced around world buffs. Otherwise if the raid difficulty is not scaled around it, then it will only feel like the most lackluster 6p set bonus so far because the content is NOT making you feel like this set bonus matters because the content is not scaled around it. The swing of these two outcomes makes me think keep tank damage reduction set bonuses to tank sets, and just add more to shaman gameplay rotation.
Make 6 piece big and exciting for us. Look back to the 2p set ideas. Or make Chain Heal into a Riptide target spread Riptide to all the bounces. Or casting Riptide on a target applies the Riptide buff to all party members - these two make chain healing off riptide targets easier to proc the % healing increases we have in runes and set bonuses already. Or go completely off the script and do something which makes Healing Rain usable again. Something which turns totems into huge cooldowns. There’s plenty of ways to go around it, make it fun and different and less set and forget!