I can't explain these changes... it seems that Blizzard don't like resto shamans...

Other changes :

Source : PTR 3.1.0 - Build 9684

I would think that the change to Ancestral Healing and Healing Grace is aimed more toward nerfing Elemental and Enhancement offspecing into resto than a pure resto build.

In any pure resto build, you still won't have to spec into Healing Grace to pick up Ancestral Healing. A resto shaman typically will put 5 points in Imp HW and 5 points in Tidal Focus, which provides enough penetration into the resto tree to pick up the newly placed Ancestral Healing.

The changes to the resto tree are obviously not done, we have to wait and see what else will be affected by the mana spring change.

Edit: I see the source of your concern now. You don't max out tidal waves and instead use the 3 points in Ancestral healing to build further up the tree.

I would have thought it was the opposite.

Elemental PvP'ers want the dispell resistance to flame shock and bloodlust over a percentage increase in armour for critical heals. This change was aimed at them.

Chances are if you didn't max out tidal waves then you are a PvP build and you would want to take both Ancestral Healing and Healing Grace anyway.

Unless they change tier 1 no one is going to waste 8 points just for that dispel resistance anyway. They probably figured that since almost all other classes get dispel resistance in tier 1-2 they might as well put it there for shamans.
You are right that most PvP builds would include both of those anyway, but i disagree on the PvE part. You can't realistically take more than 3 points in Tidal Focus unless you want to miss out on Ancestral Healing/Healing Focus/Elemental Weapons. For some situations i might take it, sure, but in general i would rather max those three given the current mana situation.

With Blessing of Wisdom and Mana Spring totem now delivering the same benefit, I wonder if there's a possibility of a buff conflict. Because my 10man team has no regular DK, I usually drop Strength of Earth. My now-engrained habit of dropping SoE rather annoys the occasional DK we get, especially on the mobility fights.

Can someone, who has access to the PTR, test whether dropping Mana Spring totem pushes Blessing of Wisdom off the buff bar or not?

I don't see any reason to drop mana spring totem since there are no range issues with BoW. Unless of course bliz gives us some sorta of unique self buff for dropping it but I'm not holding my breath.

Blessing of Wisdom does not get pushed off by Mana Spring. However, they do not stack. Had a Ret pally throw untalented BoW on me, put my mp5 while casting at 481. Dropped Mana Spring with 5/5 Restorative totems, my mp5 only went up to 499. 91 mp5 from BoW vs 109 from talented Mana Spring is the 18 mp5 difference.

(edit) Mana Spring goes across raid groups now. Mana Tide still does not.

In similar situations this problem was handled by granting the permanent buff (in this case, BoW) 1 additional point of the respective stat in comparison to the temporary buff (here, Mana Spring). Thus, the temporary buff would not push off the static one because it is weaker. I presume the devs are going to handle Mana Spring vs. BoW in the same way.

I edited my above post, but mana spring is now applied as a buff. The buff doesn't push Blessing of Wisdom off, even if it's stronger, but you only receive the stronger of the two effects. Mana Spring also shows up in your mana regen tooltip on your character frame, as well.

Mana Spring is raid wide, Mana Tide remains group only. I meant to check Healing Stream, but the client crashed and brought down my entire computer with it. (Hurray for having the laptop handy.) I'll try to get on again to test it, but I'm in the middle of Dalaran so crashes abound!

Omitting NS is not an option in my opinion. It's just too often the ability that saves a person from dying and I very rarely find myself in a fight where I don't use it once. Tidal Force might be a bit more debatable but still I wouldn't really drop it.

These swap of Ancestral Fortitude with Healing Grace might make an Elemental PVP build, that goes into resto, more viable, nevertheless it reduces the choices a pve Resto can make because speccing into Healing Grace is certainly not the way to go.

While the changes to Mana Spring might be a buff in 5 and 10 man environments it makes Restorative Totems even more pointsink than it was before when speccing for 25 man raids. On the other hand Manatide is still kind of required.

This is exactly my concern as well. Mana Tide is just necessary. Paladins only have to spend 2 points to get their 20% buff to BoW, we have to spend 5 to get our 20% buff to mana spring and healing spring, plus these 5 points are necessary for Mana Tide. I'd like to see them make Restorative Totems 2 pts for 20%, or at least make Mana Tide independent from it.

An earlier poster said that perhaps this change would free up some talent points for us, but I don't see how a raiding resto shaman can give up Mana Tide without upsetting his/her guild. It has always been a defining talent for end-game resto shamans, and a huge benefit to a raid.

I'm glad they changed it to 3 talent points; it's a good change. To compliment the updates made by Vuldunobetra they also changed 'Cleanse Spirit' to a Nature School instead of Arcane School.

I'm waiting for mmo-champion to update it's talent calculator, but I think we needed those 5 points to make it to Improved Chain Heal, Nature's Blessing and Blessing of the Eternals.

It essentially means that Resto shamans can now choose two of the following in a standard 16/55 build:
-Elemental Weapons
-Healing Focus
-Healing Way

It definitely cleans up the tree a bit, but I am a little annoyed that they just threw out 85-106.25 MP5 instead of adding it to Water Shield somehow.

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Some numbers with dropping healing stream totem instead of mana spring on Mirmirion (and using the healing stream totem glyph), this fight is pretty good for using it because of massive damage on all the raid :

Wow Web Stats

Similarily, I don't have ImpES despite having Lesser Healing Wave glyphed.
I tried 1/3 Imp Shields and 2/2 ImpES, tried it with the current 3/3 Imp Shields and 0/2 ImpES, and the second just "flows" better.

If you are assigned to primary tank healing, the benefit of healing way is obvious. If you are not, how often do you end up casting HW on the same target twice in a row?

While I don't know how Mirimirion fight compares to the other Ulduar in terms on how often and how many people will eat AoE this Webstats puts the 4 healingstreams almost 1M HP healed during that fight. (compared to the druid tophealer who was at 1,3M effective healing)

So the two design changes with Healers having to focus on mana efficiency and removal of mana spring as a unique buff might very well put a lot of bonus points towards shaman dpsers raidviability for fights like this.

While the small numbers on healing stream have often earned a scorn from a lot of raiders the recent changes could very well prove that raids concerned with surviving AoE will shift a few of their dpsers into shamans for that perticular encounter.
While it might not be strong enough to encourage stacking shamans I would definatly think that this change might only add to their desirability in raids.

I beg to differ. Spiritual Attunement converts lost HP to mana. Proccs from watershield are independet of the actual amount of damage. Orbs procc on any damaging event, so they don't actually scale with incoming raid-dps but the number of incoming damaging events. In addition, only one globe can be consumed every three seconds (please correct me on the specific time window, if wrong), thus placing a hard cap on watershield mana-regen.
A substantial amount of mana returned from watershield is due to crits from LHW/HW, bringing it more in line with Illumination. True, the amount of crit-initiated proccs declines in heroic raids due to excessive use of chainheal. However, changes to AA and tweaks to other healers might as well bring some of us further into tank healing positions and thus allowing more mana-regen by watershield.

Someone asked almost the exact same question in a different forum. This is my take on the spiritual attunement nerf/removal and why it's really hard to directly compare the two abilities. Yes, they are similar in that both are sources of mana regen that can vary based on encounter dynamics, but there are a couple factors that make it difficult to directly compare the two.

First, Improved Water Shield means that we use water shield as a hybrid Illumination/SA, so a direct comparison of mana returns from the two abilities doesn't take into account that we don't need to stand in the fire to trigger it.

Second, the conditions that trigger water shield are very, very different from those for spiritual attunement. Paladins must be damaged and then wait for someone else to heal them up. There is no internal cooldown on this effect, and the amount of mana returned is directly related to the paladin's own health deficit, so no damage means that no mana is returned. Therefore, SA mana returns are capped according to a difficult to predict and account for combination of 1.) damage taken and 2.) the amount that other healers are willing/able to heal the paladin.

Third, SA's mana return is inversely proportional to raid awareness. The mouth breathing paladin ends with a full mana bar from playing tiddlywinks with Sapphiron's blizzard, while the paladin who is thinking one step ahead does not. Even worse, the raid healers have to spend time and mana healing the mouth breather, who is then proud of themselves for being paragons of efficiency ("This content is trivial! How come you guys always end the fight with 15% mana?") A mechanic that directly scales with stupidity and becomes worse as you start to play better is not a good mechanic.

Fourth, water shield has an internal cooldown similar to that of lightning shield and earth shield (of course, IWS ignores this internal CD; see: Illumination), so it has an absolute cap on the amount of mana returned. Furthermore, the amount of mana returned per orb is static, regardless of the trigger or amount of damage received, so the shaman isn't rewarded for standing in stuff. Additionally, water/lightning shield trigger from the most random environmental effects: Archimonde and Supremus, for example, triggered water shield like clockwork every ~5s or so, and even entering/exiting buildings in Dalaran sets off a water shield charge (this last one may have been fixed). This means that it's not uncommon for water shield to be on cooldown when the shaman gets hit, and some types of raid damage - dots in particular - don't trigger the shield at all. So in some cases, we don't get mana returned even if we take damage, and in other cases, we do get mana returned even though nothing visibly happened.

Finally, water shield is our only "active" source of personal regen. It would have to be either rebalanced around no longer firing off damage/environmental triggers or removed entirely, with another ability added in its place. On top of this, if we don't spend GCDs refreshing water shield, it does nothing for us. Depending on how intensive the healing is, we may or may not have time to refresh water shield before the charges wear out. Compare this to spiritual attunement, which incurs no opportunity cost and requires no decision making on the part of the paladin, other than the conscious decision to wait for someone else to top them up rather than doing it themselves.

I wonder with the change to healing stream totem if they'll change the glyph eventually too. I actually loved the glyph for healing heroics and 10 man naxx, and with the additional glyphs were getting, i'm glad that I get the power of it had while glyphed without having to use a major for it.

Glyph of Earthshield is looking really promising, and as the watershield glyph doesn't scale at all, I'm probably going to drop that one for earthshield.

Due to the impending MS changes (of which I'm furious about, to be honest) I'm increasing concerned about my mana pool's survivability on extended fights. Rather than change it to a BoW replacement (which means it's useless in anything but 10 mans), I'd like to have seen it changed to a raid-wide replenishment source. Since that's obviously not happening, I'm trying to reitemize my current spec/gear to maintain efficiency.

Has anyone crunched the numbers to see at what point MP5 becomes more effective than a crit heavy spec w/ IWS?