Why is Rsham the underdog?

Classes Shaman
1

Legit question, as im trying to understand it. I understand they are training dummies in PvP, but my question is directed at PvE.

With race for world first, ive seen many shamans topping healing charts during split raids but only a handful of leading guilds are pushing Mythic raids with one.

The general answers ive seen in twitch chat is that Rshamans lack damage output - a major requirement when pushing for world first.

It doesnt seem to be a thoroughput issue and seeing the PTR updates, with the single minor improvement to shaman, im curious on why play a shaman at this point, other than loyalty to the spec.

The buff to acid rain is, universally agreed, laughable.

I’m sincerely curious on why shaman isnt even bottom barrel, its not even on the roster right now? Or, more specifically, why would i or anyone play a shaman over abofher healer right now (assuming mainig and not just fotm)

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2

Damage is pretty good bud in PVE and PVP. Who cares what other people do?

Hungry dogs run faster

3

There in lies your problem.

Mouthbreathers are going to spew the same crap they are fed. These fools aren’t being helpful they are looking for attentiin and recognition.

The only problem with rsham is in pvp where it it the ONLY healer without an Immunity.

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4

I’m playing rshaman right now and so far I’ve made it to 9 keys with a gs of 378.

I’m nervous too because of these forums that I’ll find my plateau but honestly I’m doing okay when the group isn’t stepping in the bad stuff all the time. I even manage to keep us alive when we pull too much or our tank dies. I even ask everyone how heals were and nothing but compliments.

I do think that we’re not as bad as people say. I do wish my dps was a bit higher but chalking that up to my lack of skill right now having not played since early SL.

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I feel like I heal way better on my shaman than my druid. It’s fine, could use some buffs though.

6

This gets better with better tanks with better gear and the same to an extent for dps. They will stand in less and require less healing allowing you to dos more

7

Why are you worried about DPS as a healer? Stop that.

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8

Highest io Rshaman has only timed 2 17s. Meanwhile evokers, resto druids, hpal and h priest have all timed 20-21 keys.

Healing Rain needs to be insta cast for Acid Raid to feel good. It just feels awful spending 2 second cast time at the start of pulls to basically put up a weak dot and hot and it’s just way too short duration and too small cirrcle to have such a long cast time. Look at Efflo in comparison, it lasts 3x longer, it’s bigger, can be relocated and it’s insta cast…

Last tier of the spec tree needs to be reworked, its pathetic compared to say Resto Druids last tier. 4 points to max out 1 mediocre, no damage, covenant while resto druid gets their 2 best covenants for 2 points each. P wave should be 2 points max and we should get a 2 pointer for either kryian totem or chain harvest.

Class tree could use a bit of bloat pruning, it looks sick at first but then you realize you end up with like half the utility you had in Shadowlands because there’s just way too many talents and not enough talent points. Gust of Wind, the most fun new spell being stuck behind 2 2 point talents (one of which is basically completely worthless bloat 2 points for10% ghostwolf movespeed lol) in a row for example is a crime. You end up having to ditch your hex, earth elemental, some totems etc because you just don’t have enough points to even get back what you had in shadowlands.

  • Meanwhile R Druid is getting buffed on Tuesday, LOL.
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9

Every healer is capable of keeping up with M+ if they have the right gear, so really the only way to compare healers in M+ is how much DPS they can do while healing. I wouldn’t mind DPSing as a healer if it was still a “bonus” and not what defines the meta and viability of your class in M+.

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Goes to show you the favoritism at blizz, they always baby the druid class and make it amazing lol. Shamans always the bottom of the barrel class that no one plays. at this point they should just delete it. Time to reroll i guess

11

Some doom and gloom responses.

Its just interesting to see a class get dethroned and not be viable in too end content or, atleast, a preferred choice in any single content type.

PvP requires too much coordination to not be trained and die except for a few elite players.

M+ - well, you’ll get you 15s done but dont expect to push more than that unless you’re the top 1%

Raids - you’ll clear normal and push heroic, but it’ll be a rough go

Im really just intrigued, as buffs and nerfs roll out, how little is considered for this class to align it for all content types.

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12

You have a point. The talent tree ends up taking away utility. Needs a bloat pruning for sure

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13

You got a point my friend. Rsham has been my main sense BFA. I PvP and it does take considerable coordination compared to other healers. Iv always loved the utility and that’s the double edge sword of the class. Right now the class feels very underwhelming in PvP. Healing and damage. Iv been testing the damage builds and it’s not worth running because our heals are nothing without the necessary modifiers. Solo shuffle just feels awful. Ascendance feels lack luster and not having a immunity is huge. Not to mention our totems can be killed with one move, buuut I want to be able to kill enemy shaman totems with frost shock. I love what they did but it all feels worse then SL. I love the new spells they made for shaman because the utility is great. When I need 4 globals just to cast a healing surge to heal you. That is a problem. Earth shield > Riptide > Healing Stream Totem > Flameshock “if you have time” > Healing Surge. Thankfully they are buffing Healing Stream 15% Riptide 15% and Healing Tide 100%. Resto shaman is in tough spot in PvP. Balancing Raiding, Mythics, and PvP must be so difficult. They are listening and so hopefully these changes on the 20th will be enough

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14

Its getting to the point where its kind of a spit in our faces… and then they dont even have anyone reading the forums for concerns, their testers obv dont know what theyre doing. why dont they just listen to/take ideas from the public?

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15

It may be easier to say why Rsham was strong before.

Shaman had access to Earthquake ele, and a powerful cd to increased sustained, passive AoE damage.
Shaman had access to vesper totem, a powerful cd to allow for burst aoe damage and healing.
Shaman’s instant and ST heals were far more powerful, causing them to not always just default to chain heal spam.

Some new things others have that actively hurt resto shaman:
Enh has a raid buff, resto does not.
Druid (healers) have a raid buff now.
Hpal has a damage buff now.
Priests have PI-double now.
Monks have damage debuff, and MANY raid buffs now.
Evoker brings lust and has much stronger heals than resto shamans.

Rsham needs the above things mentioned to return to the spec, then Resto shaman needs mana springs removed and give it a raid buff that in some ways, buffs the raid damage or party if only a party totem. Something to buff casters, maybe.

Every time I look at what Evoker is, I think why in the world would you opt to take a resto shaman over that spec, as it is just a resto shaman that is better and less situational, in every single conceivable way.

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16

Hey, someone who gets it.

We don’t really bring much of anything, our one unique thing is SLT which is not strong against the rot damage in a lot of the raid, and you can barrier it with disc instead.

Our damage got hard hit with the loss of legendaries.

druid brings a better version of wind rush since ours got nerfed in beta with no explaination.

Everyone and their mother can have lust, literally, since drums exist (it’s not quite as good, but still, better than nothing and it’s still given to several classes).

Our mana regen utility is straight up outclassed by evokers, priests, and druids. Why MTT has a 20y range is beyond me, why mana spring is 200 mana per cast (you’ll see maybe one heals worth over a 5m fight)…again, beyond me where the number came from. Probably because it’s a class thing and didn’t want ele sham to pump healers up?

Hex is polymorph with a cooldown
earth ele in a raid is a damage cooldown unlike a paladin or monk that can taunt in a pinch

A lot of healers got access to interrupts with class trees. Several have externals to save the day if someone gets caught in a bad spot.

A lot of our talents/spells haven’t had modern redesigns, things like the HTT change coming on ptr was something the community has been asking for since legion when M+ got introduced and we were fairly low ranked in keys then. Tranq and divine hymn already have this.

It’s something enh felt when DH got introduced and we saw things like interrupts gaining resources added for the first time. Symbol of hope (hpriest) regens mana, hits 40y and recovers defensives for the raid. MTT is a stick that regens mana and the only benefit is you don’t have to spend 4 seconds on it.

I can go on and on, a lot of people are gonna just write it all off going “we’re fine, it’s just naysayers”.

Also if anyone goes, “hey, a shamans finally timed a 20”, the first one on the board (at nearly the bottom of the +20 rankings)…two healed the final boss of vaults to kill it. He said so himself when it was talked about in Earthshrine earlier.

Throughput alone, which falls apart the second people spread more than two feet and is in the same niche of the new hotness, cannot save this spec.

5 Likes
17

Why can’t chain heal jump range be increased like it is with the pvp talent? So that shaman stays firmly in the stack healing role? The mana cost is restrictive enough without also limiting it to the melee pile. Downpour and healing rain have that stack healing covered.

pvp wise shaman needs a new defensive but also it feels like it could use another short CD instant heal that isn’t riptide. Like how holy priest has circle of healing and PoM to fill globals along with their instant flash heal procs. As a lazy solution make downpour instant cast for example. I can guarantee no competent shaman considers that talent for pvp as it is.

Same goes for healing rain: Shamans aren’t going to spend ~2 seconds to put down rain in bgs. It feels awkward enough putting it down in dungeons let alone a BG where people are constantly moving around and you risk eating a kick for such a low impact spell.

I’d like to see either or both made instant. As it is I skip both those talents for pvp. The CD on our aura mastery is too long imo. I think cutting off a whole minute on spiritwalkers grace is warranted. Two minues feels ridiculous.

I find spiritwalk and gust of wind a bit underwhelming when you spend 2 talent points on 10% ghostwolf speed getting to them. I’ve said it in another threat but I’d like gust of wind to ignore/break roots and spirit walk to give a ‘freedom’ effect instead of 60% speed. I use gust in bgs almost solely to avoid fall-damage/knocks-off.

1 Like
18

Honestly at this point I kinda feel like the devs see resto shaman as the most direct competition to preservation evokers and are purposely keeping r shaman down so that their shiney new spec looks good and gets invites.

If you think about it the overlap of these 2 is the most of any healers. Shaman was always known for good stacked healing in raids and as a blust provider with high damage for m+. Now when you think of those things and need those roles filled, you go for Evoker instead.

Wouldn’t be surprised if blizz keeps r shaman in the gutter all expansion just to prop up evoker in their place. Just mind blowing to me that resto druid was pretty much equal to r shaman for raid HPS and WAY, WAY ahead in m+ (literally 0 shamans in top 100 io, 33 r druids) AND got a powerful group/raid utility (motw) gets a sizeable buff while r shaman is quickly becoming a meme in the community.

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19

This feels so tin-foil hatish but it also feels so very true.
They even went so far as to make the story about how Shamans are evil now and the good guys are the new ‘Aspect-based-Shamans’.

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20

Is it normal to feel the spec is bloated. I am having a hard time picking up a lot of talents in the tree… (I am new to resto shaman). My other is a resto druid and I feel I can pick up so much more stuff in the tree than my shaman atm.

4 Likes