Since flametongue totem no longer provides flametongue and WF totem doesn't do windfury weapon, I guess it comes down to this:
In essence shamans will no longer be able to provide weapon imbues to other classes.

...lovely

Flametongue totem sucked and now it is (or will be when its no longer bugged) quite good. Windfury totem was one of the single largest melee buffs in game but prevented stones and poisons from being used and of course druids and hunters were unable to use it now its a major buff to druids and hunters, about the same for rogues and a minor nerf to arms wars. I really don't see any downside to this. The changes are overall a buff I don't see any reason to complain.

New Changes:
The mechanics for Tidal Force seem... interesting. Main issues that need to be addressed: does the buff/debuff only stack to 3 and does the 20 seconds duration reset after each crit?

I'd be willing to bet it's an activated ability with a 2 or 3 minute cooldown.

So it's not super amazing, but keep in mind that it's just an 11 point talent.

This.

Probably 3 minutes though: 1 or 2 minutes CD would make Holy Paladins cry, especially considering Divine Favour is 1 crit with a 2 min CD.

We can always hope though! Also... Give Shaman a "Glyph of Chained Restoration" which works like the 8 Piece t1 bonus (Your Healing Wave will now jump to 2 additional nearby targets. Each jump reduces the effectiveness of the heal by 80%.)

'Nature’s Blessing no longer increases spell damage from Intellect, and the effect has been reduced to 5/10/15% from 10/20/30%. This is in result of the new spell power system. Players should notice little to no change in the power of the spell relevant to healing spells.'

Can someone explain what it means by 'no longer increases spell damage from Intellect', how is the talent calculated now? It looks like this will be a nerf to the damage received by the talent, which is no real bother for raiding but is slightly annoying for pvp.

Increases the chance you'll resist spell interruption when casting your Chain Heal spell by 50%.
Decreases the chance your Earth Shield spell will be dispelled by 30%.
Increases the duration of Mana Tide Totem by 3 seconds (or one tick).

Also they should do this "Stoneclaw Totem: Health of the Stoneclaw totem is increased by 5% of the Shaman’s total health." to all totems (especially Mana Tide)

Edit: I first I thought you meant pushback interruption but re-reading I think you meant like pummel.kick,CS etc. It would be good to be able to get off chain heals in arenas to take advantage of Tidal waves

Here's some possibilities.

Glyph of Greater Chain Heal: Allows your chain heal 1 additional chain at 50% effectiveness of the previous chain.
Glyph of Earthen Armor: Gives your targets affected by the heal over time effect of Earthliving Weapon to increase their armor by 10%.
Glyph of the Wellspring: Gives your Mana Spring totem an additional 15 mana per tick
Glyph of Water's Freedom: When you heal a target via Lesser Healing Wave, your target gains 5% immunity to Daze and all other movement impairing effects.
Glyph of the Healing Way: Grants your Healing Way effect the effect to increase healing done to the target by 3%. Stacks up to 3 times.
Glyph of Nature's Efficiency: Alters your Nature's Swiftness spell to also reduce the mana cost of the next heal by 100%.

Thank you for doing this : )

Having got an beta key i was doing some instances today and realized that my downranked healing spells heals far less then on life. It seems that Blizzard wants really to disable this mechanic beside perhaps downrankig 1-2 ranks. I made some testing with lvl 70 with full restospec (so that what is available life and Tidal Waves affecting hpm) with 1510 Spellpower, hw values includes Healing Way (3).
By the way, Spellpower-coeff for shaman heals seems to be a bit less then 0.54*CastTime, but 0.54 seems to be the best two-digit approx, so in terms of scaling 1 Spellpower = 1.89 Healing

We discovered this downranking "nerf" in alpha and were told it is intended. You can still downrank, but the window of ranks is much smaller.

I'm trying to come up with a better way to suggest to bliz a way to calculate downranking. The issue I think bliz is trying to fix is that lower ranked spells are higher H/m esp at high levels of +healing pretty much making using the top ranked spells rare. In addition the large mana increases of spells in WotLK seems to indicate they are trying to compensate for increased regen rates and mana returned in raid situations.

Lets take a look at current numbers (I excluded ranks below rank 5 due to additional downranking penalties

spell rank	Cast Time	Mana Cost	Avg.Heal Amount	Avg Heal +3 healing way	Heal/mana	Heal/mana w / 3 healing way	Heal/sec	Heal/sec w 3 +healing way
Healing Wave 5	2.50	190	1627	1920	8.57	10.11	650.95	768.12
Healing Wave 6	2.50	252	2085	2460	8.28	9.77	833.94	984.05
Healing Wave 7	2.50	323	2594	3061	8.03	9.48	1037.62	1224.39
Healing Wave 8	2.50	418	3188	3762	7.63	9.00	1275.17	1504.71
Healing Wave 9	2.50	532	3864	4560	7.26	8.57	1545.73	1823.96
Healing Wave 10	2.50	589	4266	5033	7.24	8.55	1706.26	2013.38
Healing Wave 11	2.50	622	4389	5179	7.05	8.32	1755.54	2071.53
Healing Wave 12	2.50	684	4871	5747	7.12	8.40	1948.26	2298.94

If current mechanics were kept for lich king

spell rank	Cast Time	Mana Cost	Avg.Heal Amount	Avg Heal +3 healing way	Heal/mana	Heal/mana w / 3 healing
Healing Wave 5	2.50	190	1893	2233	9.96	11.75
Healing Wave 6	2.50	252	2411	2845	9.58	11.30
Healing Wave 7	2.50	323	2980	3517	9.23	10.89
Healing Wave 8	2.50	418	3635	4289	8.70	10.26
Healing Wave 9	2.50	532	4372	5159	8.22	9.70
Healing Wave 10	2.50	589	4837	5708	8.21	9.69
Healing Wave 11	2.50	622	5084	5999	8.17	9.64
Healing Wave 12	2.50	684	5814	6860	8.50	10.03
Healing Wave 13	2.50	1287	6391	7541	4.96	5.86
Healing Wave 14	2.50	1520	6875	8113	4.52	5.34

My proposed changes would make the new downranking coef (spell manacost/ max rank of spell mana cost) pretty much flattening heal/mana across all ranks so that downranking purpose is not to save mana but to apply the right amount of healing without overhealing and wasting mana.

example of my proposed coef at lvl 80 I also reduced mana costs of new ranks to be a large increase but not so ridiculous as the current place holder values are.

spell rank	Cast Time	Mana Cost	Avg.Heal Amount	Avg Heal +3 healing way	Heal/mana	Heal/mana w / 3 healing
Healing Wave 5	2.5	190	821	968	4.32	5.10
Healing Wave 6	2.5	252	1126	1328	4.47	5.28
Healing Wave 7	2.5	323	1498	1768	4.64	5.47
Healing Wave 8	2.5	418	2000	2359	4.78	5.64
Healing Wave 9	2.5	532	2617	3088	4.92	5.80
Healing Wave 10	2.5	589	3014	3556	5.12	6.04
Healing Wave 11	2.5	622	3198	3774	5.14	6.06
Healing Wave 12	2.5	684	3770	4449	5.51	6.50
Healing Wave 13	2.5	855	4666	5506	5.46	6.44
Healing Wave 14	2.5	1235	6550	7729	5.30	6.26

also I thought saw somepost post the new downranking forumla but now I can't find it. Can someone repost so I can do a comparison of mine and bliz? I know the numbers don't look all that great but I am posting to get people to think about a solution that I can propose that will allow downranking to server its purpose of small heals while maintaining the Heal/mana bliz seems to be expecting in lich raids,

Note: All these values are using current resto talents I haven't included the additional multipliers to healing wave this is just an example.

The testing on the new downranking formula was more confusing than anything.

It seems that every spell has a end level. That seems to be something like the level at which it gets its last increase in base damage/healing, or one more.
For talented spells that often don't scale, it's the level when the next level is taught + 1.

Until you reach that end level, you get 100% of your spellpower.
For every level afterwards, you lose 5% of your spell power.
If you're 20 levels past the end level, you receive 0 benefit.

Example: Arcane Missiles rank 10 is taught at 69, and should receive the full benefit of (1/3.5) until its ending level of 71.
At level 72, it should get 95%*(1/3.5), at level 75 it gets 80%*(1/3.5), and at 91 should shouldn't get anything at all.
The end level for most other ranks of Arcane Missiles seems to be "taught rank + 6", you get a new rank every 8 levels.
The taught and end ranks BC don't seem to follow any pattern at all.

The problem is that when you try to test things, your main data for when downranking occurs comes from Ahn'Qiraj and BC spells which have very erratic teaching, effective and ending levels.



So, if you have some more data for actually tested downranking, I'll have a look and try to see if I can make the support the findings so far.

I just tried to make the best of one complete test row with Arcane Missiles which do fixed damage. HoTs are good for testing for the same reason.

Drats I was hoping to avoid reverse engineering the coefs. But assuming the 5% per level is true what do you guys think of my counter proposal for the coefs? It looks like it would be a nerf to the high rank spells but a buff to the lower ranked ones.

The duration of the buff is kind of irrelevant, because you'd pretty much just tie it to all of your heal casts, and let it do its thing whenever the cooldown came up. Its effect isn't so stunning as to make it anything other than a little extra oomph once in a while, and chances are, you'll cast 4 or 5 heals in 20 seconds, which is all the buff will reasonably last with its inherent reduction.

Another question about it, mechanically, is how it interacts with Chain Heal. It can either a) reduce after a full Chain Heal once if you happen to crit, or b) reduce after a full Chain Heal for the number of crits that you generate, or c) reduce real-time during Chain Heals.

The first case would be kind of abusing it, potentially generating 9 crits out of the ability. The second two would provide for a quick means to burn through remaining charges after 10s of duration, or to generate a single big honking triple Chain Heal.

I actually think the mana costs are totally out of whack with what values they should be. They have put in a number of talents that specifically feed off high value heals for several of the healing classes. For example holy priest get mana back from heals that overheal for more then 50% and disc priests proc shields based on the amount healed. Shaman proc ancestral awakening for a percentage of the amount healed. I think we have a few reasons for wanting to land the bigger heals to utilize these talents, but the mana costs for Shaman in particular are extreme. I'm really hoping that they are not finalized amounts. There was a post on the forums showing relative mana cost increases. Where greater heal had only increased by 56% healing wave had increased by over 120%.

They keep promising to come back through for another pass at shaman. I hope they look at mana cost and our remaining broken talents soon!

so with Tidal force, @ 40% (after vuffs and possibly totems) the 1st cast after activating tidal force would be 100%.


Doe this give us a sweet spot to shoot for for a top end crit, or is this just a nice to have? 40% seemns doable especially deeper in LK gear sets.

I'm still confused by this. I thought there's no such thing as "healing power" anymore, or am I wrong?

The percentage nerf makes sense since spell power scales twice as well per point than the old +heal stat did.

Certain things still only apply as dmg or as healing or to specific spells. For example the 2 pc elemental t6 bonus is dmg only etc. For the most part the gear you find just has spell power. I think its mostly talents and set bonuses that make distinctions.

Well, in general, single-crits aren't really that big a deal for healers, and even to some extent for DPS in raid situations. Overall output is better, and crit doesn't help a massive amount with that. However, with the introduction of more crit-based buffs and effects in WotLK, some crit is helpful.

As of right now, I still wouldn't gear for crit, though, and Tidal Force only reinforces that, because it reduces the necessity of Crit on gear when you can crit on command, at least to some degree. Time will tell on that, because with all the new overwhelmingly powerful effects out there in WotLK, lord only knows how the raiding scene will shake out. Hopefully some guilds will get to 80 and try it out on the test servers before it goes live.

being able to generate an on-demand crit is absurdly powerful in this build. Keep in mind that a critical heal drops a major armor buff onto the recipient, and if that heal was a properly talented Healing Wave you'll be getting the Ancestral Awakening planting a significant amount of healing onto the most-needing raid member. As a minor bit of icing, some builds will then get a Water Orb to pop and regen mana.

All I wanted to say is that a crit means more than just a crit, so being able to force one is way better than it looks.

EDIT: dangit, beaten to it. And yeah, no need to excessively stack crit, since under current conditions I'd hit 75% off the first spell while under Force.

See I am having a hard time with the whole crit issue. It is obvious from the talents we have been given in the xpac that crits will contribute to our mana regen, but by how much, and how owuld our actual healing would be improved.


Lets look at the talents as they sit today:

1) AA is a direct crit bonus heal, you will be trying to crit to heal 'off' targets or the primary target for 60% more for LHW & HW (which are rather lacking compared to single target heals of other classes).

2) IWS which restores 1 orb's worth of mana every crit, which indicates that mana restoration would be at least AIDED by crit. (One note on this is that unlike the pally version you can spam rank 1HW w/ the SSC trinket on and restore mana outside the 5SR + how ever much you get form the orbs...sure you wont get alot of healing done but man will you regen mana quickly)

3) Tidal force gives you a huge crit boost for 3 spells in a 20 second span.

4) BoE bumps crit by 4% with the added bump to ELW. It helps with crit, but you gain no direct benefit from crits themselves.

5) Spirit Link is crit neutral, only giving you the ability to more fully utilize the jumps from CH.

6) Tidal Waves is sort of pushing us into a CH/HW/HW rotation. This is pretty crit neutral as well, except where AA will bump your HW heals, and that it discourages straight CH spamming for max HPS.


POSTULATE: How should shammies gear in the xpac?

GIVEN:
rough approximation of healing cycles, if you divivede HW heals between 11,12,13 & 14, the average mana cost for HW is ~1k

CH6 bumps the cost by 125%, which seems average for shammies spells (see posts in the beta forums for this), cost for CH will be ~1200 mana

Most of the time you use a CH/HW/HW cycle


RESULTS:

ana cost per cycle is ~3.2k


First we see that 1/3 of all heals are crit neutral.
Second, the remaining 2/3 are @ crit%*150% + 60% to the worst raidmember in 40 yards (smart heal prevents overhealing of that 60%).
Third, mana is restored on the same 2/3 of casts for crits. The mana restored does not scale with spell power.
Last, Tidal force gives you a high crit % on demand for short burst healing.


A simple gem test:

Mana returns for pure crit gem
2 (HW casts)*0.45% crit rating (10 crit rating gem @ level 70)*225mana (WS orb w/ imp sheilds) per 6 seconds of casting

= ~ 1.6875 Mp5

You also get
2*0.0045*0.6* value healed/2 (healing to spell power conversion) or about 10.8 spell power with on a 4k heal. This does scales with gear.

vs
current gems
3 Mp5
11 SP + 2 Mp5

NOTE: I did not include the GCD cost of WS

CONCLUSION:

Assuming 20 crit gems return close to 0.5% crit at level 80, you still need over 400 per WS orb for the crit gem to rival the pure 4mp5 gem. AA appears to be a wash from a strict gem conversion standpoint, and might be lower if the ammount healed does not double as well.

For items, the stats are close enough that you probably want to go with the gem with lower ICost. Assuming the values I found online (1/crit rating and 2.5/mp5) then I see very little reason not so gear for mp5 over crit.

Im not sure how haste rates against these 3, as haste will impact the ## of HW casts per minute, although at a lower crit rate, which may offset the value.\\

The problem as I am looking at the trees now is that even if AA and BoE and even Imp WS were questionable, what would you replace them with?