resto shaman isnt the issue. at its core the issue lies in game design, and specifically dungeon design.
as things are now, resto shamans have a full kit able to deal with everything they designed dungeons to do to players.
other healers dont really have that. so of course people will play the class that has a more well rounded kit, able to to deal with everything that is required in dungeons.
I can’t remember a recent raid that priests were left out of
The title of this thread is: Why is the balance for healer in M+ so bad right now?
Are you trolling?
I think at this point raiding and 5man are raiding are two different ways people are playing the game at this point. Sure, theres a lot of overlap at the higher end, but for a lot of players it is one or the other. Having one class be a giant outlier like this points to issues.
It’s like an UNO reverse from doing keys like HOI and Uldaman in DF as a priest with mass dispel and mind soothe.
this weeks afix downgraded warriors an entire rank for m+ cause we can only cleanse every other one you are asking for people to not bring us at all
Yeah resto and evokers are doing well, so lets nerf Holy paladin
Basically because of how blizzard designed content this expansion.
Shaman isnt busted because it heals way more than the other healers, but because of their kit.
Tanks are way squishier, even melee hits hurt, shaman has 2 low cd aoe stuns and a 3% flat damage reduction (was 5)
Theres a lot of poison throughout the dungeons this season, shaman can dispell it from the entire group
It is somewhat easy to play, brings lust, has at least 2 great defensives, best interrupt in the game and decent healing.
And also good and diverse cds to pop on different ocasions that you can cycle through
Bolded because again, this is a problem with Blizzard archaic design philosophy when it comes to balance.
Blizzard intentionally designs the classes poorly against each other so there’s always something that is just objectively better in a particular situation or scenario.
Then Blizzard makes those particular situations or scenarios so prominent that certain classes/specs excel while others are either forced to reroll or languish in content that becomes significantly harder just because how their class is designed.
Nerfing shamans into the ground for being the strongest healer right now would only make them terrible to play when the content changes and suddenly all their utility stops mattering.
That’s the exact wrong direction. The constant cursing and poisoning etc is overplayed and needs to stop. These mechanics should matter instead of just causing us to need constant mass cleanses basically in rotation. We don’t need more homogenization and dumbing down of things. We need more creative design and more unique solutions.
As far as the healing part of the equation, I prefer my druid over my shaman.
a way to fix healer tanks
give healers a battle rez and a unique dispel that clears everything (PVE ONLY)
give tanks lust
and give dps some CC (knock up , aoe stuns and the like)
M+ exist since “mop” (kinda) and has been a nightmare of balance , raids have more bodies so balance there is kinda different , u have 2 tanks at least , 2 heals and 6 dps as min req
My priest heals keys just fine.
It just doesn’t do anything else in the group thats meaningful
So I can do the base job, but I can’t
Interrupt
Cleanse poisons
Aoe stun
Grant mass move speed
Self battle rez (lolwithoutaweirdcapstone talent)
Etc
Etc
Etc
So why take priest outside of desperation for a healer?
This is a bit of a false equivalence though because the poison effect on the boss was balanced against its other abilities and there weren’t any other poison effects on the trash you can pull onto the worm if you so chose. When the poison is on trash or you need a dispel from an affix, there are pulls that are possible only because of the presence of a poison dispel that can make a huge difference in the pulls the group can manage; this allows for efficiencies that don’t exist for groups that lack that one piece of utility.
While selfishly I would like to see this, I really don’t think they can do this without completely fubaring the rest of the game. Resto druid is bad due to GCD saturation, not the ceiling. If a resto druid is able to setup a full suite of HoTs, it still absolutely pumps healing. If they simply increase the HPS enough for M+ to make them desirable, that will likely make them utterly broken in raid.
I really think fixing resto druid’s problems is going to take some form of a rework. I don’t think tweaking the numbers coming out of the spec is going to work without some creative “does more outside of raid” usage.
This would be great for PUGs but terrible for premades. As frustrating as it is to have groups always expect everything to be a healer mechanic, there is a valid reason why things are treated that way. It made perfect season for me to kill explosives in SL as the healer because my global was less important unless I needed to heal than either the tank or DPS. Taking away the ability for the group to optimize how they deal with an affix doesn’t seem like the right approach.
Ironically resto druid can do all of those things despite being viewed as the worst healer, being better on single target cleanse poison (8-second CD) and worse on the interrupt (12 second CD versus 15 second CD and in specific form).
I mean to be fair, if you have 1 overperforming outlier, it makes sense to nerf one rather than have to balance around buffing 6 others. Just like it makes more sense to buff an underperformer than to nerf everyone else around them to match.
Why does shaman have so many utilities when they also heal equally well as other healers? What’s the philosophy behind this utility disparity? When you compare shaman to monks, who would want a monk healer? Monk’s healing isn’t even superior to shaman but with no utility.
Maybe originally they designed shaman with less healing and more utilities, now shaman is healing as much as if not more than other healers, they still retain those original utilities. Compounding this disparity, they designed dungeons that require utilities other than raw healing, you have this problem. Developers will either have to trim shaman utility or healing.
The same goes with paladin and priest classes. Paladin was more durable with all those self-defenses since they were designed to stand in melee range and heal less than priest. Now paladin can cast in range and heal as much as priest, they still retain durability. I would take paladin over priest. The game has evolved so much but those classes are still being designed on the original assumptions.
my rdruid is still struggling to get invited to 4s lol. Got accepted to one 4 mists this week and we 2 chested it no problem without lust. Been denied in every other one so far. There are some groups (that like to take extra damage) where i have been healing 1m hps for minutes on end so i dont think rdruid is bad by any means. I think tier lists make an impression on a lot of people so theyre more inclined to wait for a shaman or something better than take a chance on a resto but i do think rdruid can absolutely perform well enough in m+ for the average group. just gotta take it on the chin for now but i def understand if they want a different choice for heals. i love the m+ mode since legion but i gotta be honest. not enjoying the experience so far but i dont expect much to change, at least for my sake.
For M+, healing throughput is almost never what allows a spec to rise to meta popularity. Healing beyond what’s necessary to keep a group alive doesn’t provide any supplemental value. If a spec is so far ahead on healing it enables larger pulls, that might be able to give that healer a nod; but since that rarely happens in M+, it isn’t really a viable outcome.
The only times I can recall where healing throughput drove a decision on which healer groups brought were the times a healer couldn’t keep their group alive. Obviously if a healer can’t keep up the minimum healing to keep a group alive through unavoidable damage, they won’t be a candidate. But since Blizzard hasn’t left healers in such a position very often, the most important factor on the M+ healer selection has been their damage output and utility for a while now.
The primary problem with resto druid healing in M+ has little to do with its ceiling, it’s with the GCD commitment it needs to make in order to come anywhere close to the ceiling. Resto druid can push obscene healing numbers with adequate setup. The problem is that the amount of globals druid has to commit to reaching those numbers leaves little room for anything else. Preservation evoker can achieve similar HPS numbers in M+ with a third of the globals, leaving far more room to add damage and utility.
Resto shaman honestly isn’t even that impressive for M+ in terms of healing throughput. It’s just the healing output is good enough, while providing a perfect utility kit for the dungeons we have this season.
Exactly, I’ll refer back to my previous statement, because I fully agree…
Only way I can see priest having an edge was during bursting with mass dispel. The other possibly being if there’s a strong unit they can mind control or use chains to cc.
So the tradeoff I’ve found is that Shaman’s utility comes at the risk of going OOM. I spent a lot of time in Dragonflight Season 3 and 4 healing on Holy Priest and Resto Druid and mana was basically not a concern. The same with monk, you can drink mana tea and keep rolling. But as a Shaman, I’ve been OOM and scrambling many, many times in mythic+ and I need to actually sit and drink between big trash mob pulls which can slow the group down, so I have to be mindful of how much to drink before catching up with them. The 4p set bonus mana reduction helps a lot, but going OOM is still a risk if I start trying to pump chain heals or spam healing surge.