I had said earlier in this thread that the Riptide glyph wasn't *complete* garbage, but on further reflection I've realized that it truly is crap.

Generally, healing glyphs do one of two things: improve HPS or HPM (which makes sense, since those are the two things healers worry about in their stats). Something like the LHW and CH glyphs fall into the former category, while something like the Flash Heal or Lifebloom glyphs fall into the latter category. The problem with the Riptide glyph is that it does neither of these because of how the spell gets used in practice. It's supposed to improve healing per mana by allowing the HoT to tick longer, but will never actually be able to give that benefit.

For single-target healing, I primarily use Riptide to proc Tidal Waves. For this usage, I'm almost always overwriting the HoT before it runs out with its current duration, so any extra duration on the HoT goes completely to waste. For raid healing, Riptide gets used as an oh crap button, and in this case the person who gets healed by it is almost always healed to full and then doesn't take any more damage before the HoT wears off with its current duration, so again any extra duration on the HoT goes to waste.

So what would actually make the glyph useful - reduced cooldown, improved crit chance, something like that?

Ineffective healing (as implied by the patch notes) is effective healing + overhealing, not only overhealing, it's common statement, even used in damage meters mods. So there is no mistake in patch notes.

Offtopic PVP:

I wouldn't think they would make Hex untrinketable without significantly reducing its duration. 10 seconds of disarm/silence is a long time. It would really stengthen shaman, though I'm not sure the ability would be very fair. I think Hex should be tweaked, but I think the appropriate tweaks are things like instant cast, removing control of character while hexed, etc.

I generally only use Riptide as a means of maintaining Tidal Waves procs, or a means of getting some amount of healing in situations where I have to move, nothing more. That glyph isn't going to change that in the slightest, and as such, I have no reason to use it whatsoever.

The problem with the Flame Shock idea of using Riptide is that it's not like DPS. Flame Shock, you want to hit, let the duration tick down, then Lava Burst after it's done most of its damage. With Riptide, you have to be very effective at determining who's taking damage and when in order to get the most out of this strategy, and you have to have your other healers in on the gag, as it were. Chances are, you Riptide, let the HoT tick, and now suddenly your target is full by other healing. So now you're wasting half of the healing from Chain Heal (the initial hit) in order to get a 25% buff to the remainder of the bounces, which isn't efficient.

The Earth Shield glyph seems promising, but I have no clue why people would be giving up Water Mastery for it. The Chain Heal glyph is largely worthless as it is, that fourth bounce amounting to another random Riptide. Generally speaking, you're better off with having Earth Shield, Water Mastery, and Mana Tide if you're a Chain Heal spammer, perhaps dropping Mana Tide for LHW if you're on tanks, or HW if you mix up your heals a little more on raid healing.

As for Shamans and their place in the raid, the game is becoming massively homogenized. They don't particularly want any healer outshining any other healer on any given fight. As such, every healer is getting a lot of AOE healing buffs so as to make them more effective at raid healing, whereas before only Shamans were effective at it. But you have to look at healing not as a meter padding effort, but at what kind of healing your raid needs and when. The reason you see Druids topping meters all over the place is because they have a massive stream of healing that almost never overheals and rarely impacts the raid in a great fashion. They're still most effective as damage mitigation on tanks, they just get a meter padder in their AOE functionality. I see Priests becoming more of the utility healer that Shamans are now, and I can't necessarily disagree with that idea.

Healing is not DPS. Meters are effective for gauging DPS because there are very few situations which call for anything but maximum DPS throughput. Therefore, you want to see them topping meters. Healing doesn't work like that. As an oversimplified example, if the raid takes mass AOE damage, and one person is close to death, then your AOE heal might generate the most metered healing, but it is not the most effective heal in that situation. Shamans have a great toolset in these situations, and as such, I don't fear for our raid slots much.