Hey all,
Just wanted to post a bit of feedback on some resto shaman changes that have been live since the prepatch. This is just based on doing some random keys since the update. For credibility, I have played resto shaman for a very long time and was an active member of the m+ community through all of DF. These are just some small things i think Blizz should look at, would love to hear if any of you agree / disagree.
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6 Second Downpour Window Too Short:
I think the overall change of baking downpour into healing rain was a really unique and creative change and i am a fan. However, the 6 second window is a little awkward/clunky to use. I think it would make more sense and just play better if the window to cast downpour was the entire duration of the healing rain (10 seconds) or was at least bumped up to 8 seconds. I see downpour as being an important hp increasing tool for high end m+ content where abilities begin to one-shot players, and having to plan around a 6sec window (and further, a 6 sec buff) is really hard to do smoothly and accurately. -
Ancestral Guidance 60% Nerf:
The 60% nerf to ancestral guidance (from 25% duplicated healing to 10% duplicated healing) was way too heavy-handed. Ancestral Guidance was one of our best healing throughput cooldowns due to how it interacted with cloudburst. I understand the reasoning behind the nerf (combination of it being really powerful while on the class tree and the ability to abuse it with 2min ascendance talent) but 60% was far too much. Would like to see this nerf scaled back a bit as it just makes Ancestral Guidance hardly worth pressing. Ironically, it now almost guanrantees that you will press it with ascendance. So if the goal was to discourage that interaction, it actually had the opposite effect. -
Elemental Resistance Clunky with CBT:
The elemental resistance talent, which gives group members 3% dr for 3 seconds when healed by cloudburst totem, is really clunky to use in practice. This is a talent i was really excited about as it is another tool that is great for high end m+ content survivability. But in reality, it is hard to use for a few reasons. First, due to how cloudburst works by only healing injured group members, only group members who are healed by the cloudburst “burst” will receive this damage reduction. Meaning if you have 5 players and only 2 are injured when you pop cloudburst, only those 2 will receive the damage reduction. This encourages popping cloudburst both early and late depending on the scenario, and the buff only lasting a few seconds complicates this even further. I think to recrify this, the talent should make it so both dropping cloudburst and popping it apply elemental resistance to all group members regardless of if they received healing or not. I realize this could seem overpowered in raid content, but since the buff only lasts for a few seconds I do think it is still within the realm of balanced conpared to what other healing classes also offer.
Open to other ideas as well? Currently this talent is one of the ones i would say is expendable in the class tree for m+ due to how unreliable it works with cloudburst totem. -
New Master of the Elements is Clunky / Lackluster:
Master of the Elements (MotE for short) received a complete overhaul. Instead of increasing the effectiveness of the next nature spell (both heal and dps) by 20%, it now increases healing surge by 30% (stacking up to 2 times) and makes your next healing surge spread flame shock (2 flame shocks with 2 stacks). This change sounds cool in theory but overall is a substantial dps loss from not being able to buff acid rain anymore and feels clunky to use. Healing surge is a very expensive way to spread a flame shock, and overall is less dps than just spamming acid rain and chain lightning in aoe situations. Additionally, the proc rate of lava surge on live right now is 10% regardless of how many flame shocks you have out, which we do not know yet if this is intended or a bug.
The healing surge buff is a great option for more single target healing when needed, but the old MotE was more interactive, effective, and most importantly, more fun to use than the new MotE. I think a great fix to this would be to just offer the old MotE as a choice talent with the new MotE (and just give one of them a different name). As each version of MotE serves a different niche, i think offering both to players is a great compromise. -
PTC/Tidewters/Pwave Talent String Too Weak:
Currently, even with the riptide-enhancing Season 3 tier bonus that we are using, the left side capstone of the spec tree comprised of the 3 talents in the subject for this point feels underwhelming. I hope further tuning passes will address this, as pwave + tidewaters is currently our only reliable multi-target instant heal outside of chain heal (and both already require ample set up to maximize what little hps they are giving). For people who wish to not use chain heal, pwave should be a viable alternative as it has been throughout most of DF. -
Resto DPS Rotation Boring + Ineffective:
Restoration dps with old MotE “weaving” and stormkeeper was both engaging and effective in m+ content. With the removal of stormkeeper and the changes with MotE (discussed above), our m+ dps rotation is now both boring and less effective compared to the majority of DF. For aoe content, the current rotation would be acid rain into chain lightning spam. You wouldnt even spread flame shocks for new MotE unless you needed to for the healing surge buff, a global spent on chain lightning is just more dps. For single target, the rotation is flame shock > lava burst > lightning bolt. Without old MotE and witnout stormkeeper, there is so little variety in the dps buttons we now press. I get that we are a healing spec and that dps should be secondary, but that does not mean it should be boring or ineffective (see resto druid dps for example, both engaging and hugely effective)
Honorable Mentions:
- Would be cool if downpour also provided a burst of “acid damage” to enemies standing in acid rain. Could address some of the points ive made regarding dps
- Spouting spirits is such an amazing change. Has turned SLT from a niche ability to a fantastic all-around cooldown
- Current iteration of Ancestral Awakening talent is really bad. Needs tuning or reverted to old AA
- Lava surge proc rates (mentioned in the MotE point above) are currently the same regardless of how many flameshocks are out. This feels wrong and just makes new MotE that much worse than old MotE
- Earthen harmony is in a really awkward spot on the tree and makes it hard to take both Earthen Harmony and Downpour for chain heal builds. Would like to see this moved eventually.
- Improved ELW is still a sub-par talent even with the buffs it received and the enhanced imbues talent on the class tree. Honestly, i think the best way to fix this would be to make Earthliving Weapon a baseline ability and have Improved Earthliving Weapon be the 1 talent on that side of the tree (rather than it essentially being the 2 talents it is now). This would allow for easier pathing on the right side of the tree
Anyways thanks for reading. Hope some of this feedback is seen by the resto shaman dev.