...you should refresh the shield as fast as possible when you're at lower than the maximum and have a spare gcd. While you thus "throw away" the free mana from some globes, you get a chance for more free mana later on at zero cost (except for the GCD) and you get the chance at not losing the shield. Border case could be if you could get OO5SR if not casting the water shield (if this puts you in the 5SR).
The big problem is obviously having spare GCDs and knowing when it's spare.
Any spell that costs 0 mana does not remove/stop you from being/entering the 5sr.
Your absolutly right though, you shouldn't wait untill your orbs are gone to look for a free global, but use EVERY SINGLE free global to refresh watersheild. No need to worry about the 5sr.
__
Personally I'm afraid that because we are expected to get mana regen from Mana/5 and watersheild that we will become outscalled by int/spirit regen classes. Spirit is much cheaper then Mana/5, and with everyone (spirit regen classes) getting 30% regen from spirit while casting and immensly benifiting from being outside the 5sr, unscaling little old watershield will become outdated. Mana/5 wont keep up.
I see our regen being supirior to spirit/int classes while in the 5sr for the first teir or two of raiding, and then being caught up to. At that point any fight that allows you to be out of the 5sr will make RestoShaman's a liability especially if mana becomes as big of a factor as blizzard is making it out to be.
thanks for the input, its good to have someone from the beta who is raiding in the thread. I do have a few questions
1) Is SL working yet? If not, do you think it will affect our healing rotations alot? If so, did it affect your rotations?
2) How difficult was it to keep up WS.
3) Did you have the WS glyphs?
4) do you think 25 man raiding would be different for shaman roles?
5) Do you think a hypothetcal CH rank 6 would make a difference in the viability of CH?
A couple of naxx questions
1) Were the encounters similar to Naxx Pre-BC?
2) How was raid damage, movement, etc. Things that are issues for shaman
3) How far did you guys get?
Thanks ahead of time.
1)SL seemed to be working. It was sort of handy in creating some synergy behind tank/melee healing. Chain Heal definitely jumped to the melee a lot and they didn't seem to be taking random damage. In terms of affecting rotations, on bosses, there was too much healing needed to properly keep it up or no one was in range to get linked(could be a bug). It's a fairly high mana cost and the GCD costs even more to spam it on a tank. Could be different in a 25 man raid than the 10.
2)I didn't find it difficult but I spam it lots during my current raiding so I am used to refreshing it very consistently.
3)No. I literally created a pre-made joined LFG and got into a group.
4)Shaman can heal tanks quite effectively now. Once I got a feel for a rotation other than CH spam(didn't take long) I was able to keep the tank up. According to the meters people were running, I was being dwarfed by the Priest and Paladin we had that were healing but through a few places I had to nearly solo keep the tank up, didn't seem to be too impossible.
5)Possibly. My experience could be a gearing issue as the pre-mades on beta have the purchasable PvP blue set. I didn't spend much time itemizing other than a MP5 set vs. Crit set. The big thing for me was the mana cost of Chain Heal. It's still a good spell, but it's HPS isn't enough to be useful in the 10 man situation w/o loads of overhealing. And at 800 mana per cast, you are almost better off just casting LHW to top up a couple people as you can proc AA(which is really nifty).
About Naxx10:
1) Yes, we did spdier and DK wings. Encounters were very similar except for the fact they seemed almost ridiculously easy. Several of the boss defining abilites have been dramatically changed(mostly b/c there can only be 10 people) and in occasions where I noticed the difference, it seemed to make the ability nearly trivial(Anub kiting for example. If the tank isn't sleeping, it's cake).
2)Again, fights were very similar to Naxx pre-bc in terms of movement. Raid damage was toned down quite a bit. You could get away with standing in Faerlina's fire for 3-4 ticks before you were in any danger at all.
3)Spider and DK wings to 4H. Gothick is by far the hardest fight we did.
I feel it's worth mentioning, everyone in my raid was a pre-made character. As such we all had the PvP gear supplied, nothing else really. I don't know how much that affected everything b/c I'm not sure how the quest/dungeon blues compare for tanks and healers. Too be totally honest, I don't even know if the tanks were crit-immune.
I do know that rogues are doing 4k DPS with mutilate spec right now. But it's due to a bug.
Seems like the latest build has included a couple nerfs and adjustments to Shaman healing.
- Ancestral Awakening: the summoned Ancestral Spirit now heals for 7/13/20% of the amount healed by the Shaman (down from 20/40/60%).
- Tidal Waves reworked. Now you have a 20/40/60/80/100% chance after you cast Chain Heal to lower the cast time of your next Lesser Healing Wave or Healing Wave spell by 30%. In addition, your Healing Wave gains an additional 4/8/12/16/20% of your bonus healing effects and your Lesser Healing Wave gains an additional 2/4/6/8/10% of your bonus healing effects.
- Earthliving Weapon (Rank 6): Now increases healing done by 150 (up from 26).
An obvious nerf to Ancestral Awakening, but the Tidal Waves change is more disheartening. It now only affects the next heal, as opposed to the next three heals. Which really makes me question just how effective it will be. Seeing as there's no reverse synergy that would make you want to alternate from HW or LHW to Chain Heal, it's certainly less appealing. Really depends on the incoming damage as to what's feasible or where it's worth it.
Originally Posted by Caniki
Hey guys, I heard that Blizzard puts out these things called "patches" that contain "content"
K, maybe 60% from an AA proc was a bit much, could lead to 20k HW's (in total), but it's only after crits. The amount of healing added now is getting rally now, healing you can't even control. We're supposed to become crit oriented also, but IWS is really weak and now AA is also not that game-breaking (or making) any more....
Tidal Waves was already quite weak, the CH-HW-HW-HW rotation had a lot of problems (almost 4 seconds of hardly any healing, then a lot of healing in 3 seconds) and would only be viable if Spirit Link wont break on main tanks (in 25 mans), which it probably will. The only use I can think of now for this talent is emergency LHWs while CH spamming.
Was resto shaman healing really so powerful to warrant these nerfs? I haven't played beta but on paper it still looks we are fairly far behind druids (pvp) and priests (pve). I keep waiting for them to bring shaman in line with druids as they've surely got to do but it doesn't seem like it's happening. Is spirit link so powerful that we are being balanced around it?
Was resto shaman healing really so powerful to warrant these nerfs? I haven't played beta but on paper it still looks we are fairly far behind druids (pvp) and priests (pve). I keep waiting for them to bring shaman in line with druids as they've surely got to do but it doesn't seem like it's happening. Is spirit link so powerful that we are being balanced around it?
rant/
Removed rant because its not contructive
/rantoff
Ok, now back to constructive comments.
Perhaps someone in the beta can post regarding these nerfs, ask what the thought behind this was. I just dont see the reasoning (from the sidelines mind you, but still...)
So, lets assume this stays in effect. I was looking at talent builds with the current setup and I ran across a problem. Tidal mastery, AA, BoE, and TW are all VERY underwelming right now. The issue is I cant find ANY decent build to utilize the points elsewhere. The best I could come up with was a utility 0/15/56 CH build.
I really don't believe in Chain Heal spam on live, why would you keep the same in beta? Also, there is no such thing as a heal rotation except for single target spammage. I am seeing a lot of people post these healing methodologies, and it's just not the most effective strategy.
One of the things I like about being resto is how different fights and situations change how you play. If you are Elemental, CL LB LB LB CL repeat. If you are enhance, you can almost go afk after auto-attack. These two things are changing in the xpac, sure, but I am willing to bet a macro can do most of the work in a 25 man situation. 5 and 10 man dungeons are where being a DPS can be FUN!!!
For ANY of these, however, resto is a dynamic and fluid opportunity to test your skill. Ok, maybe it's testing your skill at whack-a-mole in many cases, but on another level there are still choices to be made. Currently my healing is about 80% chain heal, 5-10% Earth Shield, 5-10% HW, and <5% LHW on the average encounter, trash or boss. On some encounters, it's nearly 95% CH, on others, it's 50% HW. I've also stopped downranking to train myself for effective mana management with the xpac. I rarely use more than one mana pot per fight, and I'm not an Alchemist. To be fair, I'm not doing Sunwell so take everything I say with a grain of salt or choose to ignore it altogether if you are that kind of person.
When I first started raiding BT and Hyjal, I thought I was doing somethng wrong because other shamans would effectively heal much better than I. The assumption was that my gear was much worse than theirs, but I strive to be the best possible at whatever role I take. Now that my gear has caught up, I perform better than equivalently geared players. It's not necessarily because I play whack-a-mole better. The most competitive (equivalently geared)resto shaman in my guild heals about 90% or better than my effective heals, but at least 10% more overhealing than I. I discovered this is because his healing is CH 97% of the time, the other 3% comes from Earth Shield and gear procs. He pots a great deal and has the alchemist's stone, has a larger mana pool than I, but he still has the same amount of mana at key points as I do.
The points is that there is no systematic way to heal well. You have to make decisions on what to do in a given situation. HW is NOT reserved for an NS macro. HW is fine for keeping a tank alive. LHW is perfect for emergencies when NS is down and a silly warlock isn't watching the threat meter, or when you know that CH will only hit a single target, and HW will certainly overheal by 30%. I have built a macro for Earth Shield to be cast on my target's target, if my target is an enemy, and cast it on a firendly if not. Less clicking/keys = faster response.
Given all this, it is my belief that we can't say "CH costs too much" or "AA's nerf makes it not worth the talents" just yet. Let's get some real effective strategies out there for our best use of the talents and spells (Earthliving weapon is very exciting), and then we can decide if Blizz is off the mark on mana costs, talent budgets, and resto's role.
As for more constructive posts instead of commentary...
Has anyone found Healing Stream totem to be an effective tool? I recall reading that multiple healing streams stack, as do Mana Springs now. Is there ever a reason to use Healng Stream over Mana Spring with the new mana management requirements?
As an example, I have found that the Eagle incarnation of the Zul'jin fight is the best use of healing stream totem on live, and I will often use it in the Durnitol + 4 Warlock groups.
I really don't believe in Chain Heal spam on live, why would you keep the same in beta? Also, there is no such thing as a heal rotation except for single target spammage. I am seeing a lot of people post these healing methodologies, and it's just not the most effective strategy.
One of the things I like about being resto is how different fights and situations change how you play. If you are Elemental, CL LB LB LB CL repeat. If you are enhance, you can almost go afk after auto-attack. These two things are changing in the xpac, sure, but I am willing to bet a macro can do most of the work in a 25 man situation. 5 and 10 man dungeons are where being a DPS can be FUN!!!
For ANY of these, however, resto is a dynamic and fluid opportunity to test your skill. Ok, maybe it's testing your skill at whack-a-mole in many cases, but on another level there are still choices to be made. Currently my healing is about 80% chain heal, 5-10% Earth Shield, 5-10% HW, and <5% LHW on the average encounter, trash or boss. On some encounters, it's nearly 95% CH, on others, it's 50% HW. I've also stopped downranking to train myself for effective mana management with the xpac. I rarely use more than one mana pot per fight, and I'm not an Alchemist. To be fair, I'm not doing Sunwell so take everything I say with a grain of salt or choose to ignore it altogether if you are that kind of person.
When I first started raiding BT and Hyjal, I thought I was doing somethng wrong because other shamans would effectively heal much better than I. The assumption was that my gear was much worse than theirs, but I strive to be the best possible at whatever role I take. Now that my gear has caught up, I perform better than equivalently geared players. It's not necessarily because I play whack-a-mole better. The most competitive (equivalently geared)resto shaman in my guild heals about 90% or better than my effective heals, but at least 10% more overhealing than I. I discovered this is because his healing is CH 97% of the time, the other 3% comes from Earth Shield and gear procs. He pots a great deal and has the alchemist's stone, has a larger mana pool than I, but he still has the same amount of mana at key points as I do.
The points is that there is no systematic way to heal well. You have to make decisions on what to do in a given situation. HW is NOT reserved for an NS macro. HW is fine for keeping a tank alive. LHW is perfect for emergencies when NS is down and a silly warlock isn't watching the threat meter, or when you know that CH will only hit a single target, and HW will certainly overheal by 30%. I have built a macro for Earth Shield to be cast on my target's target, if my target is an enemy, and cast it on a firendly if not. Less clicking/keys = faster response.
Given all this, it is my belief that we can't say "CH costs too much" or "AA's nerf makes it not worth the talents" just yet. Let's get some real effective strategies out there for our best use of the talents and spells (Earthliving weapon is very exciting), and then we can decide if Blizz is off the mark on mana costs, talent budgets, and resto's role.
While I agree that you cant just remap all keybindings to CH and roll your face, I disagree on CH spam not being our primary tool. My % in SP is about 90% CH, 5 % HW and the rest ES and LHW. Obviously this depends on your role. But in a raid healing role, especially in Sunwell gear, CH spam is our best option for most fights. Out of the 5 fights I have seen in sunwell, only Kalec does not lend itself to CH spam, although I do seem to be doing more HW (maybe 15%) in Mu'Ru P1.
CH is by far our best heal in BC, it is efficient and matches well with the massive raid healing requirements. I have no problem if Bliz thinks we rely too much on CH, a little more variety in my cast cycles is fine.
I must say I am concerned that every single one of the shaman changes in this build was to reduce capability rahter than change it. As for the AA nerf not making it worth while, obviously I am speculating as Im not in the beta. But just using napkin math and the feedfback I have heard so far I dont see HW or LHW being that useful now. And if thats the case, you have to consider that the talents which proc off HW/LHW criots would become less useful as well.
Perhaps Im wrong, Im not running around like chicken little. I am hopeful the new ranks of CH will make up for the other tools and that CH spam will be viable again. That is why I posted wondering if there was a good CH-centric build.
Shaman needed a buff to single target healing. Our viability in arena's was close to Nil. As a resto shaman, I have to play twice as good as my opposing healer to even have a chance at winning. I'm not QQing here, just saying that in PvP, specifially arenas, Resto Shaman suck. These single target healing buffs are geared at our PvP ability IMO while making it a little more interesting in 5 and 10 mans. I remember starting in KZ, I ran OOM really fast a lot b/c I had to use more HW to keep tanks up. As I geared up, CH was effective enough for the majority of my spells. So I think that buffs to HW were needed, but the changes they make just keep making less and less sense.
As of now, chain heal just doesn't cut it. The current mechanincs on live are fine, I don't see a reason why they needed to be changed. I understand that Blizzard doesn't want any one class to have an ability that makes or breaks encounters, but Priests can still spam CoH, and in very heavy raid damage environments, CoH > CH. 800 mana for a base 800-900 heal is just not enough output for the mana cost..
So, lets assume this stays in effect. I was looking at talent builds with the current setup and I ran across a problem. Tidal mastery, AA, BoE, and TW are all VERY underwelming right now. The issue is I cant find ANY decent build to utilize the points elsewhere. The best I could come up with was a utility 0/15/56 CH build.
Then go 0/28/43, not much you want from deep resto anyway atm, except spirit link. THe menthal talents will give you around 500-600 extra spellpower, not bad at all.
0/28/43 + haste/int gear should be a HPS powerhouse.
It seems the newest beta patch has introduced 2 more ranks of heal. The Rank 7 spell restores 1055-1205 health. The mana cost is 19% of base mana, which is roughly 800 based on my experience.
yeah, 19% should be around 800 mana, which is quite cheap. LHW and HW are 1k and 1.6k atm (will go down probably) but a 800 mana heal should be easy to spam.
I personally don't see a problem with the trees if they focus more on crit-based healing. I really like the uniqueness (I've never played a paladin) given to Shamans in this regard. I think Ancestral Awakening is a start to granting both an itemization and role to a shaman's healing capability. I think the nerf was inevitable though, as 60% was a little out of hand, but 20% seems altogether too low.
I do believe there should be some mana-cost reductions based on crits, though that quickly degenerates in Paladin territory if you aren't careful. Perhaps something like "Whenever you critically heal with HW or LHW, you enter the Ancestral Focus state. The mana cost of the next HW or LHW you cast is reduced by 40%, this effect lasts 5 seconds". Basically Clearcasting for heals.
Tidal Force could be re-worked to include 100% reduced mana cost, giving it an Elemental Mastery feel, without exactly copying the elemental talent.
If we could get MORE crit based talents, and itemization(21+) + talents(9) realistically puts us near or over 30% crit unbuffed, I think I would bring a unique addition to the raid, without being over or underpowered.
All that said, I really REALLY don't like Spirit Link as it's currently worded. It seems practically useless in PvE unless you use it on persons you don't expect to take much damage, or perhaps 5-man instances with the occasional 10-man encounter. I don't really know from practical experience how it would do, however, so I'd likely keep it for now.
As it stands, if I were to choose a resto talent set right now, I would go with this 0/11/60. If I had my choice, I'd take Nature's Guardian, then Healing Grace as my next 2 talents to fill.
The thing is about Spirit Link, it's not really that useful for pvp healing either. Shaman struggle heavily at the moment when multiple team members are taking damage (i.e. vs warlock teams) and there is really nothing to make that easier in wotlk so far (now AA has been nerfed).
Chain heal is not a viable cast in pvp due to people being almost always not in range of each other and the long cast time, earth living weapon is uncontrollable (and can only possibly affect targets you are using cast time heals on anyway) and AA is both uncontrollable and will now heal for a trivial amount when proccing off LHW.
But hey, I have faith in Blizzard, I'm sure they have something up their sleeves and it's just taking a long time to materialize...
The thing is about Spirit Link, it's not really that useful for pvp healing either. Shaman struggle heavily at the moment when multiple team members are taking damage (i.e. vs warlock teams) and there is really nothing to make that easier in wotlk so far (now AA has been nerfed).
Chain heal is not a viable cast in pvp due to people being almost always not in range of each other and the long cast time, earth living weapon is uncontrollable (and can only possibly affect targets you are using cast time heals on anyway) and AA is both uncontrollable and will now heal for a trivial amount when proccing off LHW.
But hey, I have faith in Blizzard, I'm sure they have something up their sleeves and it's just taking a long time to materialize...
What I find in arenas mostly is one of two things:
Either
A) I am running out of mana too fast because I can only use two very inefficent spells, and get little to no gain from a FSR cast block(other than drinking).
B) I am easily taken out of the picture with two consecutive CC's. Rogue Mage is a great example. Poly/Blind is deadly if they get it off, and there is nothing I can do. Spirit link provides at least a resource that I have to potentially counter that move. Most teams are capable of doing enough burst to kill someone in around 8 second w/o heals. With the AA nerf we certainly have some choices, IMO, we'll cast a lot more healing waves and have to heal almost pre-emptively in arenas.
What I find in arenas mostly is one of two things:
Either
A) I am running out of mana too fast because I can only use two very inefficent spells, and get little to no gain from a FSR cast block(other than drinking).
B) I am easily taken out of the picture with two consecutive CC's. Rogue Mage is a great example. Poly/Blind is deadly if they get it off, and there is nothing I can do. Spirit link provides at least a resource that I have to potentially counter that move. Most teams are capable of doing enough burst to kill someone in around 8 second w/o heals. With the AA nerf we certainly have some choices, IMO, we'll cast a lot more healing waves and have to heal almost pre-emptively in arenas.
Does damage taken via spirit link break CC (polymorph, blind, sap)?
What I find in arenas mostly is one of two things:
Either
A) I am running out of mana too fast because I can only use two very inefficent spells, and get little to no gain from a FSR cast block(other than drinking).
B) I am easily taken out of the picture with two consecutive CC's. Rogue Mage is a great example. Poly/Blind is deadly if they get it off, and there is nothing I can do. Spirit link provides at least a resource that I have to potentially counter that move. Most teams are capable of doing enough burst to kill someone in around 8 second w/o heals. With the AA nerf we certainly have some choices, IMO, we'll cast a lot more healing waves and have to heal almost pre-emptively in arenas.
I get around A by clever use of downranking. Oh wait...
This is really starting to irk me, why do they insist on making the dps specs of the hybrid classes (druids excepted) so much better than the healing specs. Ret, shadow and enhancement are all looking stronger than the respective healing specs.
With the tanking changes and the introduction of DKs the game screams "healer shortage" at the moment.
- Mental Quickness and Unleashed Rage have swapped places.
No more 0/28/43 builds, as Menthal quickness will be 38 points deep now.... Really dont get it, they did the same to pallies (sheat of light), also moved way deeper into the tree. Do they only want deep-dipping specs ?
Does damage taken via spirit link break CC (polymorph, blind, sap)?
Yes, it most definitely does, and is the reason we have the talent. The talent could be used to spread out some tank damage, but it definitely there for PvP purposes. It also goes both ways. So, if you can't ground or ES the CC, put spririt link up and the next time you get hit, the CC breaks.
But can Spirit Link be disspelled or anything else ? Would be kinda weak if it can (again, just as ES and the weak Mana tide) and not really work as CC protection.
An other think I am very curious about is: Improved Water Shield and normal triggered water shield globes, does one eliminiate the other one ?
Water shield has an internal cooldown to avoid globes popping really fast after eachother. But will a crit heal that pops a globe also trigger this internal cooldown ? If so then it would weaken this already weak talent even more (as on fights where there is splash damage that triggers globes you could get less mana as these 2 ways of triggering globes could get into eachothers way).
09/10/08, 4:32 PM
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