I cannot quite put my finger on it, so I figured I’d ask here, and maybe see if someone might be able to help me click in and get it.
Something in BFA feels off about Restoration Shaman, and I can’t quite get the feeling as of why.
I’m not doing poorly mind you, I just don’t feel like I’m doing “Good” or “Great”
I still don’t feel like I’ve recaptured the spark of power I felt like I had back in MoP. Legion felt a little better but still mildly off.
I can’t figure it out. 
I still don’t feel like I’ve recaptured the spark of power I felt like I had back in MoP. Legion felt a little better but still mildly off.
ability pruning
Most specs feel off imo with the removal of artifact traits and nothing to fill in the gaps. They’ve pruned a lot in the the past few expansions, Legion artifacts had quite a few traits that smoothed specs out. Then that got replaced with the neck which some of the azerite traits are nice, but they still don’t bring as much as the artifacts did.
this right here is why ele got stormkeeper but enhance lost doomwinds and became a really bad spec.i cant comment on resto but the reason it feels bad is because of the taking away of the artifact weapons.
For me the class does feel off. I’ve mained shaman for 3 expansions before BFA and it isn’t nearly as fluid as it used to be.
That said, I feel like at least I’m getting into a bit of a rhythm with Resto and Elemental now. I have been really focusing on the utility of the specs and ignoring the fact that we are average or below average in throughput. While we aren’t the best, an open minded team will still play a shaman as long as they aren’t pushing for world first.
Enhancement now, that’s a big pile of crap, clunky and not that fun. (Maybe I just need to give it a chance)
Throughput is dependent on the damage output of the fight and the other healers.
Constant small damage? Other healers are going to be healing everything up before we can. But if we’re smart and the RL is smart, we throw on our ele gear and put our some damage but still keep our healing cd’s.
Big damage hitting the raid? Our mastery gets a chance to kick in and our heals skyrocket.
As someone who’s been playing it for over 10 years, here’s why:
Mythic+ consists of nothing but Healing Surge spam
Nobody wants us because pure throughput is lower than other classes.
They have zero mini-games or things to watch/take care of.
Paladins have Beacon and melee abilities, Priests have every spell reducing the cooldown of our powerful spells, Monks have melee/Mists to watch, Disc has a DPS rotation, and Druids can do a whole whack of things. Shaman don’t have anything to watch, take care of, or anything to make them engaging.
Devs literally ignoring Shaman until patch X.1 because they “never have enough time to work on us” between expansions, instead of just admitting they don’t care. This expansion was the worst for it, telling everyone they would rework Ele and change Resto/Enhance, then just touching some Talents.
Our Mastery is pretty damn bad now.
In Legion you could hit 120%+ Mastery using Trinkets to the point where every spell was healing for different mounts, and it was great. Then they nerfed our Mastery to the point where it does nothing. It’s not engaging, and 90% of the time, low-health targets are snipe-healed because
A) Our cast times are huge due to Haste having minimal synergy with our kit
B) We have no instant-casts to make meaningful saves except for Riptide and Unleash Life.
There’s a huge list of reasons as to why Shaman sucks this expansion. I dropped it right after my guild completed Mythic Uldir for Holy Priest. Tons more utility, their Mastery feels great, and their gameplay loop/mini-game holds up well while Shaman’s is non-existent.
Perhaps next expansion they’ll actually bother putting a small amount of effort back into Shaman, and I can go back to it. I miss the class, spec, and watery theme, but as of right now the spec has zero “depth” to it (Pun absolutely intended).
People dont spend enough time <60% hp. Mastery is such a monster stat but when each fight revolves around having a healing CD to handle every mechanic and the rest is low enough dtps that blanket hots cover it there isnt really a spot for the resto kit. It offers a little of everything… but its healing is based on clumped up allies and blizzard has a thing against pure tank and spanks. Bosses and players are too concerned with running from objective to objective in a fight the incoming damage is dealt in a way that every group has a healing CD available to instantly top people off… it doesnt leave a lot of room for a spec with very few non-hardcast spells to leave an impact. Even with a great mastery for progression once you have killed a boss and people get into the rhythm of not taking unneeded damage and all the other healers cds are lined up well there just isnt anything for resto to do. Trying to snipe off hp bars before someone else uses an instant cast to fill it is about what you can do… or get 3x igneous potential and rain meatballs upon your enemy all day long.
What do you mean this expansion? Blizzard doesn’t even know we exist, don’t believe me? Every class has gotten a full revamp and we haven’t had anything since Cata. They said they were going to revamp our class before bfa but they ran out of time so they scrapped it. We’re a back burner class and will keep getting pruned without having any benefit added.
Right? Lol. Boy it sure is fun healing that raider from 7% to 10% with a Riptide crit and them just dying right after from a tick of damage. I mean what is the point? We have what should be a life-saving mastery, but we don’t have the kit to make use of it.
Slow, Steady, Stacked. That’s Rsham. Meanwhile EP is full of ground targeted mechanics, knockbacks/knockups, and mechanics that require the group to sporadically spread. Don’t even get me started on M+… These developers legit hate our class.
Okay then don’t cast a hot in place of a proper heal when someone is about to die?
The class isn’t perfect, but if you play it badly then you’re going to have a bad time.
The point is that we have nothing meaningful to cast… HPriest’s have Serenity, Disc has Penance, Paladin’s have Holy Shock, Druids have Swiftmend, and Monks are sorta in the same boat (requiring a GCD for soothing mist + Enveloping), but they at least have Life Cocoon.
We don’t have anything to save someone. No absorbs or damage reduction and no strong instant heals. Healing Surge requires us to not be moving and also wait ~1.3 seconds for the heal to even go off. Every healer has a “healing surge” but we’re the only healer that lacks a strong instant option to save someone in a pinch.
I lol’d. I AM the meatball king!
To be fair, most shaman take unleash life, which is in and of itself a decent instant heal. It’s real advantage, though, is to boost the next spell you cast. If you are chain casting Surge, then I’m assuming someone is low health and our mastery actually has some value, so a Unleash Life+Deep Healing boosted Surge does actually do a decent amount of healing(upwards of a 150k). Not saying it’s overwhelming or anything, but neither is the apocalypse nigh.
I only started playing Resto at BFA launch so it has always felt really good to me. My main complaint is that the cast times don’t feel appropriate. I feel like Chain Heal should have a 1.5-2 second cast time and that Healing Rain should be instant. Healing Rain already has a cooldown to balance it. Having even a short cast time when you’re trying to hit the melee group can be frustrating.
We’re getting a little talent “BUFF” tomorrow. Will depend huge on how good it is and what we have to give up to get it. Tell you what, this is a decent class, but it really feels like we’re jack of all trades, but not that much heals. Especially in Arena… dang dude, never time to get off much more than a riptide and unleash life with the incessant stuns, interrupts, cc.
BTW, Ancestral Gift does NOT work as described in tooltip. I get interrupted all the time right after activating Spirit Walker’s Grace.
Our general healing kit is quite archaic when a lot of the other healers feel more up to date, and our healing spells in general have been a bit undertuned this expansion healing wise. (Maevycakes in Limit guild himself even said this, that our healing is just undertuned in a raid environment)… though once Glimmer pallys finally get their well needed nerfs in 8.3 we won’t look nearly as bad.
In regards to archaic design… Things such as Chain heals absurdly long cast time, healing rains absurdly long cast time and relatively short duration (having to constantly plop that annoying &@$ down and interrupt what we’re doing in order to do so). When it comes to our actual throughput as well, it is lacking because our healing in raids is balanced around our mastery being potent and we often aren’t getting much benefit from it in this “Use a damage reduction healing cooldown” meta of really bursty, and low sustained damage fights.
If you look at all the fights in Eternal palace it’s like all heavy burst damage intake, meaning extremely low sustained healing… and our kit is very terrible with dealing with burst damage… we’re all about wanting a high sustained damage fight where people are stacked up (such as phase 1 mythic orgozoa).
Our utility though with SLT, Tremor totem, Ancestral protection totem, Wind Rush, Ascendance, and Healing Tide totem is what keeps us viable… At high levels of mythic raiding we are there for extra DPS, utility and raid cooldown… not HPS.
Also, whoever it was in this thread saying they swapped to holy priest and is enjoying more utility, that is very wrong, holy priest has absolute garbage for utility compared to Resto sham. Aside from being able to prevent people getting bubbled on mythic Ashvane they have really none.
That’s not the point.
The point is that our Mastery implies that we should be targeting the individuals with the lowest HP.
You’d think that as a class that heals people the lower they are on HP, you’d have an Instant Cast that can actually save them, but no.
Why even bother with Shaman Mastery when Holy Priest is superior in literally every way possible?
The only reason Restoration is even brought is because of Spirit Link alone. If we didn’t have it, our raid/Mythic+ presence would be, quite literally, non-existent.
This would be fine if Shaman had a meaningful instant-cast spell, but they don’t.
But if you’re progressing and people are taking chunks of damage that take them down to 20% or less, what would you rather have saving them?
Instant Holy Shock? Instant Serenity? Instant Swiftmend?
Or would you rather your Shaman take 3 seconds to cast Unleash Life, then Healing Surge while also hoping that it crits to heal you back up to 60%?
Fortitude, Leap of Faith, Mass Dispel, Shining Force, Divine Hymn boost, Guardian Spirit, Symbol of Hope, and Divine Feather all feel ten times better than Shaman utility, have to be honest.
Not to mention, using Salvation feels just as good as, if not better than Spirit Link.
Fortitude feels better than Heroism? I think you’re the only person I’ve ever seen that thinks half of those are even the least bit fun. I’ll take Capacitor Totem over Shining Force any day of the week.