Buanna

Zul'jin's Claw Rage. Although you may have meant "tank" to mean "guy we know is taking damage" rather than the main tank.

Boni and Bonii are not words.
Bonuses is.

 

zoombini

Even if you assume that you'd need all your GCDs for Spirit Link (which, as the people above, I doubt) it's decreasing the healing need by a lot by making the damage MUCH less spiky - yes, it gets spread to more people, but it's much slower on those people, meaning overhealing can be decreased along with a lowered chance of accidental tank death.

 

Azurai

Firstly, the way SL is worded makes it sound useless. 'Nearby party members', so its not targetted? I suppose in 2v2 or 3v3 pvp it would be pretty pro when they're focusing but meh. Also, even if they did change it to some ridiculous maximum number (like 50,000 damage) and targettable to make it 'useful', you still couldn't use it on all the fights where it would matter. Random raid damage on any encounters like twins + m'uru + KJ could easily blow apart anyone soul linked with a tank, and since its reactive and doesn't actually heal or stop damage, it will only be mediocre at saving people from random damage, especially since you're losing your GCD that could just be a LHW

I see it more as a crappy, random PW:S that will hopefully just be replaced with something more substantial. After the abomination ES is for PvE compared to everyone else's 51 point talents, I think resto deserves a bit more. Ok, except for Divine Illumination, pallies got hosed too.

 

zoombini

I'd say any fight where a non-tank can get selected to take a large amount of damage, and everyone else will be fine. Off the top of my head:

red riding hood targets on BBW (yes, they shouldn't be getting hit at all. But this would make it a LOT easier to heal if they accidentally get hit 2-3 times)

sacrifices on illhoof

watery grave on tidewalker

gazed players on thaladred

gazed players on Supremus

fel raged players on Gurtogg (how useful would this be for fel-raged mages?)

 

Azurai

1) Slow people are dead anyway
2) Or just... heal them.
3) Same as 2.
4) Same as 1.
5) Same as 1.
6) Uhhh, ok and when you divide a 40k damage to 3 people over 3 seconds... Yay 2 other dead people. That's of course assuming they make it a duration effect and drop the silly cap on it. The current version just won't stop a felrage death 95% of the time.

 

ChaguraED

I have a question about Spirit Link. The wording from the tooltip reads "You link the friendly target with two nearby targets".

I'm curious what's tipping everyone to think that it means friendly target in this case?

Edit: In an aside from it's Raid uses (as a damaging tool against perhaps AoE pulls or MT protection) if it did damage enemies instead, it would have a significant effect on resto shaman solo-grinding mobs; 50% damage reduction and damage your enemies as well.

This is of course based on it linking your friendly target to enemies, rather than party/raid members

 

rava

I think it largely depends on the duration and if you're able to keep up multiple links. My main thoughts were on fights that had unpredictable raid damage like Twins or Entropius. Going into twins with a bunch of spirit links up would help alleviate some of the initial damage as well as retossing a couple after a nova because the healing is generally relaxed at that point. My guild still kills the rogue last so I see it being mildly useful if someone is getting gang raped by shadow kids. On Entropius it would help normalize the raid damage for the first bit if you were able to get a few links rolling during his spawning/early stages of the phase. I just see it as a way to normalize raid damage on encounters that would otherwise have random/spiky natures to them. Also, depending on how the damage is dealt it could be an awesome way of killing yourself to save on repairs!

I'll have a croque monsieur, a paella, two mutton pills, and a stein of mead.

 

Daidalos

Most of us are assuming its chain heal type of targeting (but targeting those with the most health instead of least). It doesn't say that explitcitly so we could be wrong but I think it makes sense and thats what I'm going to assume until we know more. Spirit Link in warcraft 3 was only on friendly targets I believe so I see no reason think it has offensive capabilities.

Elemental Shaman calculations: http://spreadsheets.google.com/ccc?k...IWuwb3e2IkuZKw

Restoration Shaman calculations:http://spreadsheets.google.com/ccc?k...IWv3sPmcYnEJUg

 

jaredh

I think the 11 in elemental all comes down to how Elemental Focus really works...it's worded as such (parapharased):

After landing a critical strike you enter clearcasting which reduces the mana cost of the next two damage spells.

So is "damage" counting as "damage AND healing" or is it just damage? If it's just damage obviously there are 3 points going into Resto.

I think there has to be serious consideration of eliminating Healing Way in favor of other talents in there. Not using the threat reduction I suspect is a very very bad idea for 5/10 mans at level 80. Maybe not so much for 25 man runs, but not many people will be doing those early.

Also, not being able to go 5/5 into Tidal Focus is worrisome....let alone not being able to put any points in Nature's Guardian at all....that talent has saved me more times than I care to count in BT.

And if you are going Crit based (which it certainly seems you will want to), you also want a full 5/5 in Tidal Mastery.

I'm counting 9-10 points in Resto that are not ticked in some of the Resto 11/6/54 builds.

I just don't know if 15% more on Earthshield is really worth giving up Threat Reduction or Spell Cost

 

madrix

I can think of a dozen or so fights that this could help, including bruttalis tanks and burn victims. Illidan, council, bloodboil, ect ect ect. It is about toning down burst damage. It will not kill the targets it gets chained to (as the damage max is not enough to do so.) But the idea of having a tank taking 6K+ less damage bursted, instantly is very promising.

 

Fealinor

i want to mention that

War Pirate :: Shaman WotLK Alpha Talent Tree

says that clearcasting does proc from LHW & HW, but only reduces mana costs for damage spells. This is the link the thread editor uses as well as the elemental wotlk discussion thread.

So i guess going for a 8/6/57 will at the moment be the best. 8 in elemental as i posted before because of splashdmg which i guess will continue in WotLK.

 

PSGarak

Every description of Elemental Focus I've come across so far says it reduces the mana cost of your next 2 damage or healing spells.
EDIT: said descriptions being Yarr! and http://urlshort.com/wotlk/site/talentlist.php

One shaman chain-casting spirit link and using no heals is worth his raid slot iff the redistribution of damage allows an extra healer's-worth of healing from the other healers. I would consider this to be true on a 25-man tank&spank fight since you either double or triple the main-tank-healing that can be done with prayer of mending, renew, bubble, chain heal, and Tree Form druids in general. If the other healers in your raid are all paladins and holy priests, you don't get that much benefit out of it, if you're stacked with the two resto specs it's godly because it converts suboptimal healing scenarios into optimal ones.

Spirit Link is also the closest thing you guys get to an instant heal. It's useful preventing gibs from RSTS casted (or otherwise predictable) nukes. And it while it will take experience to confirm this, I suspect its PvP applications are situationally really nice for larger-group arenas because you effectively put a few thousand life on the assist-train target. You soften up the rest of the team for AoE and such, so it's not completely overpowered or uncounterable, but it changes the dynamics.

http://armory.mmo-champion.com.nyud....88847noszh.png

 

rava

Kind of like how jaredh just did? :P

I'd rather drop all of the points in ele and fill out the first tier of enhance and pick up nature's guardian. I haven't had warding throughout Sunwell and I really don't notice much difference. Reactive healing > constant damage reduction on any fight where I'm already spamming chain, imo!

I'll have a croque monsieur, a paella, two mutton pills, and a stein of mead.

 

Dollar

The talents really seem to be strengthening our weaknesses instead of strengthening our strengths which I would rather have the other way around. You don't bring Resto shamans to raids now to heal tanks, your not going to bring them when they get elevated to mediocre rather than horrible tank healers. Spirit Link I does think has some promise to spread around damage and because of the "After 2200 damage, the link will sever." wording. Even if there are more ranks and bonus spellpower affects the spirit link I doubt it will exceed 6,000-7,000 and with level 80 health values I don't think there will be much danger throwing it around. It has a lot of obvious synergy with chain heal, on a Saber Lash type fight one shaman spamming spirit link and one spamming chain heal seems very effective.

It would be ridiculously awesome if some of these talents affected CH instead of just LHW and HW, I almost wet myself thinking about crit stacking with EF and Ancestral Guardian but I don't think it will happen.

Lord, beer me strength.

 

Shakes

Don't forget it's 15% on water shield too. In fact the 15% on water shield is probably worth more than 3 points in spell cost reduction for longevity, the earth shield bonus is just gravy.

 

PsyBomb

ok, I'm going to assume for a moment that Elemental Focus will NOT benefit healing spells, since most of the builds so far have been based on it doing so. Of course, this will be a raid build as well (focused on the 25-man end of things). My result comes to:

War Pirate :: Shaman WotLK Alpha Talent Tree

...well, a few of those points are debatable, but not all THAT many. Sum of it is that I can NOT find any way to justify the 5 points it would take for me to get Nature's Guardian, unless it became apparent that i would never be casting any actual heal other than Chain Heal (a remote possibility, but only in some VERY screwy 25-man environments. If it comes to that, then:

War Pirate :: Shaman WotLK Alpha Talent Tree

Like I said, screwy as a lightbulb convention, but it could (theoretically) happen.

---

I've also been looking at things from a PvP perspective recently, and THAT is just as hard as the PvE side of things. It's astounding how many points shift. I'm assuming moderately high-level play, where foes will get rid of your Tide with alacrity.

War Pirate :: Shaman WotLK Alpha Talent Tree

To teach and to learn, to laugh and make others laugh. This is my purpose, and any day in which I don't wasn't worth the time it took to get through.

 

Killme888

Why would you assume that it doesn't affect heals when it does? All the in-game sources indicate that it does, the only place that it doesn't is player made talent templates, which is what everyones linking, those templates aren't the most accurate, as some of the earlier ones still had ancestral knowledge as % mana instead of % int.

 

PsyBomb

Honestly? Just as a theoretical worst-case exercise. Also if the numbers stack up to say that you can do without it, because those 3 points make a fairly large difference in the end of things. Seriously, I'm strongly considering dropping Elemental Warding alltogether, due to how tight the points are getting. I just can't afford to do that without know how the raid encounters will play out, especially considering that Frost and Nature will be the likely source of most of the splash damage for a while.

To teach and to learn, to laugh and make others laugh. This is my purpose, and any day in which I don't wasn't worth the time it took to get through.

 

Azurai

I've already made my point about bloodboil, sans using it on tanks. Of the rest of things you mention only council strikes me as a fight where the skill would actually be useful on. Brutallus can simply destroy a tank, so if your tanks are using CDs reactively on stomps they're probably not very good at this game to begin with and SL won't save them. Otherwise though, wasting a GCD on moving 2200 damage to soakers is just as bad as dropping a LHW at best, death to someone at worst.

It's a mostly useless ability still. It should be replaced by warlock type buff placable on someone with a sizable duration instead of a cap. Then at least it will serve its purpose on the gimmick encounters.

Uncontrollably spreading extra raid damage around in encounters like those that are in sunwell screams terrible. In the end you aren't actually healing anyone, you're just spreading the damage around and getting farther behind with each cast of SL.

It does give resto shamans an awesome new edge in pvp though. Except that I would bet money its dispellable.

 

Gormane

I agree that on most fights, SL is not a skill that can be used in a predictable, strategic way. One fight which comes to my mind is RoS phase 3, to save someone who got Spite for the second time (or even the first time, if it's late in the fight). And also RoS phase 1, because instead of healing, SL absorbs (in a way).

In general, I would see SL as a) an emergency "heal": if someone is very close to dying (and NS on cooldown), SL might save them; and b) a tool to predictably spread damage to turn a one target fight into a three target fight (to allow, as has been pointed out, more HoTs to tick).

Regarding LHW/HW, the resto shaman changes might not make us the prefect MT healers (when compared to what other classes get), but at the very least they allow us to effectively raid heal even in situations where CH is quite useless, due to the raid being spread out (e.g. Illidan phase 3-5, Naj'entus).

 

Anedris

Arguing that SL is useless because all the currently existing content can be [easily] beaten without it is a little silly. Of course it can - it had to be designed that way, because SL isn't in the game yet. Also, arguing that a 2200 SL is useless, given that that's the level 60 version and omits any of the expected spellpower scaling, is not terribly useful. Assuming it scales with health pools and tanks have about twice as much health now as they did at 60, we might reasonably expect a SL cast by a shaman on Brutallus to absorb 4-6k damage. That's a massive instant heal, considering that the damage will be automatically healed up by all the chain heals bouncing off the MT (caveat: do not use immediately before or after the third slash of course).

 

TheSorcerer

On the discussion on spirit link I'm absolutely sure most people misunderstand how if will work. Maybe the wording is a bit off aswell, that would suggest why everyone is on the wrong boat.

Let's roll it up from the far end - the designers pov:

A: "Ok so WotLK will introduce alot of 10 man raiding content. We'll need to smooth out all of the classes to avoid stacking and make those raids more fun even if you can't get your priests and paladins for tank healing. So lets buff the single target heals of shaman."

B: "Check."

C: "But hey, shamans are all about chain heal! It's their signature spell and they LUF it!"

A: "You're right. So they'll want some upgrade to that aswell. How I see it though, chain heal already is very strong and buffing it even further might push it over the top."

B: "I agree."

C: "Then what about improving chain heal in single target situations? This would even work in the direction we're already heading with our Healing Wave buffs. You guys remember Spirit Link from the rts? That would work great with chain heal wouldn't it?"

A: "That actually is an awsome idea!"

B: "It's awsome until your spirit linked target get's hit by Finger of Death on archimonde...."

C: "We could cap the damage it spreads."

We'll halt this story for a moment. This is pretty much what the game designers went through while searching for mechanics for WotLK, in a simplyfied way of course. This is also pretty much what we know up until now.

I believe though, that Spirit Link will not weare off after it reaches the cap but will either trigger a hidden cooldown or will simply cap the damage that ca