Civilian

* Please take it easy on me, this is my first post of it's kind, and if anything sounds like it's from left field, attribute it to work fatigue.* My problem:

In short, I'm having a hard time understanding how shaman will still be as viable a healing class in PvE as we have been in TBC. I am a huge fan of downranking for mana efficiency, and that is the problem I'm having. Currently I can keep from going oom just fine with normal use of mana pots, and trinket popping, and don't really need any extra group arrangements( i.e spriest) to be an effective healer during the vast majority of boss fights. But with the new abilites and high mana cost of existing abilities, I don't see how we're supposed to keep up without more regen, and we don't get regen increasing abilities in WOTLK.

Other than the change to elemental focus( 9pts in elemental tree) to include healing spells, there isn't a whole lot in the way of mana conserving or increasing abilities. And with the changes to our trees, cross tree specs just aren't as obvious. I can see that they are trying to make us more crit oriented like paladins, allowing our offensive spell crits to either proc abilities that would decrease our need to heal, or lower the cost of following spells. But these spells from my experience are just like windfury... not dependable. For instance : Ancestral Awakening. When fully talented it summons a spirit to heal the lowest hp friendly target around for 20% of the crit heal that proc'd the ability. -So...I happen to get a 3k lhw crit, not absurd at all, and the spirit heals a friendly for 600hp.I'm not sure of the cooldown on the effect, and with talents like Blessing of the Eternals and even Tidal Force to increase our spell crit, it seems decent. But still we have not been crit based healers, and without geming for crit I don't see how we can possibly accrue an amount of crit good enough to really make this talent worth while.

Healing Tactics:

As a resto shaman, I find my usual healing assignments to be the raid or melee, where my chain heal is of the most use, while placing ES on a Tank, OT, or a caster (myself included) to aid against spell pushback effects. I've been a potion chugger since I stepped into 25man instances, using them whenever the cooldown was up unless I don't need to (less than 1k mana short of full). This along side downranking solved my problems, I could now survive longish fights while trapped in the melee group.

Alot of healers prefer to use max ranks and cancel wasted heals effectively to reduce mana consumption, a method that can be extremely effective to slow you on the road from pull to oom, but I find this to sometimes be undependable when taking into account lag and the method's of other healers. If the raid (normal shammy assignment) is doing fine and the tank is obviously in need of extra heals, I'll apply said heals as needed, but in most cases, if I'm not healing my assigned target, it puts extra stress on other healers and someone is going to pay (die) because of it.

My Conclusion

Ofcourse I have to take into account new gear in wotlk which may have more regen or int than it's TBC counterparts, and the vast amount that will be added to my mana pool by the time I hit 80, but along with more mana due to increased levels come increased ranks of our already mana hungry spells. So long story short, as far as I can see, we get more ways to spend mana on an already inefficient platform of heals(based on mana consumption per heal) and nearly nothing to improve regen( imp watershield did nothing for me).

Chainheal can rather easily be outdone my CoH, the only variable being our group setups whether the priest or shaman (or both) get grouped with the spriest/hunter. So with our mana at stake and our once "uber healing spell" being pretty marginal now, what will be the reason to need a resto shaman. Our group buffs are threatened my similar abilities of other classes. Will we be as useful in Wotlk for our abilities as we have been, or will it come down simply to who's the better healer. In either case I think I'm a proficient healer and will be alright personally, but at the same time I can already see being turned down because my spot was taken my a priest partnered with a ret pally.

After reading this post several times, I'm sure some things will be misconstrued, and some people may think I'm an idiot, but hey..this is theorycrafting right? Also, this is all based on my experience on the PTR, i'm not in beta, and maybe there are some things I don't know..actually...i'm sure of it. I really would love people to weigh in on this, i see countless forum posts for other classes wotlk theorycrafting, but few for shaman. *none of the logic of this post should be used against me in the court of hopeful app's :) *

alextrebek:

In short, I'm having a hard time understanding how shaman will still be as viable a healing class in PvE as we have been in TBC.

Things will be different, but this is intended by Blizzard.  Although Blizzard has said many times that "certain class abilities are defining and should be preserved" (particularly in reference to druid shapeshifting), this philosophy does not appear to apply to their outlook for healers.  WotLK will do a lot to homogenize healing classes so that each will have roughly the same variety of healing spells as any other, esp. AoE and direct heals.  For example priests (which in TBC had the largest variety of healing spells and who defended their value as "jack of all trades" healers), will have the same variety of healing spells (with variations in how they are packaged) as druids in WotLK.

Blizzard's stated goal is to make no encounter absolutely dependent on any one particular class.  As it stands in TBC, resto shamans are absolutely required for high level end-game content.  In one walk-through of the Eredar Twins fight, the narrative went, "this is yet another fight where stacking resto shamans is overpowered."  The changes Blizzard has engineered into the healing trees is presumably intended to eliminate any kind of class dependency.  The side-effect is that healers are losing their uniqueness.

alextrebek:

I am a huge fan of downranking for mana efficiency, and that is the problem I'm having. Currently I can keep from going oom just fine with normal use of mana pots, and trinket popping, and don't really need any extra group arrangements( i.e spriest) to be an effective healer during the vast majority of boss fights.

The elimination of downranking affects all the classes for whom downranking was a way to be more mana-efficient, esp. priests and paladins.  Blizzard has attempted to address this by providing classes with mana efficiency talents in their trees, and I think every class will become more dependent on spirit-based mana regeneration (not just priests and druids).  For their part, at least in the current beta, Blizzard (Ghostcrawler) has said that no one is having mana problems. 

alextrebek:

*  I can see that they are trying to make us more crit oriented like paladins, allowing our offensive spell crits to either proc abilities that would decrease our need to heal, or lower the cost of following spells.

This is the new mechanic introduced mid-beta for every healing class.  For priests it was initially laid out so that the Discipline tree would be crit-based and the Holy tree spirit-based, but now the Holy tree is heavily crit-based.  Evidently crit is the new cross-class mechanic for healers in WotLK.

alextrebek:

Alot of healers prefer to use max ranks and cancel wasted heals effectively to reduce mana consumption

Stopcasting was the main healing strategy in the original WoW.  We're back to it.  Welcome to 2004.

alextrebek:

So with our mana at stake and our once "uber healing spell" being pretty marginal now, what will be the reason to need a resto shaman.

Shamans will be as capable as healing as any other class.  Blizzard is pretty obviously engineering the healing classes so that there will be nothing particularly special about their ability to heal.  What will distinguish shamans (and druids and paladins) is their stackable raid utility.  Every shaman that is brought into the raid is another bloodlust and set of totems.  Every druid that is brought adds another battle rez, innervate, and tree of life buff.  Each additional paladin is another blessing and aura.

Resto shamans will be fine in WotLK.

 

 

I .....I think I love you.

I admit that I was freaked out when I went oom in almost 1/2 the time on the PTR that I do Live, and now feel that my real problem was that I may not be able to /gloat at my healer pally buddy when he says he'll out heal me in say...ZA because I wont tower over him in my AOE healing. I like uniqueness between healers.... from what you've said it seems that this homogenizing will make healer spots as you implied, simply healer spots, not druid spots, shaman spots, etc . Simply I think it'll force people to improve their "game". You won't be grabbed simply because you have H.O.T's or AOE abilities, it'll depend more on the individuals skill because healers will have alot of the same general abilities, and if all the girls are wearing short skirts, how do you know which one's a hooker.

That analogy may seem a bit off, but it works, and thank you for weighing in. I feel better already : ).

ps. that analogy isn't intended to be sexist!

i do think mana will be a problem on WOTLK and i believe that shamans will become the worst healers. i dont think resto shamans will be needed that much when the expansion is realeased.

i also think haste will be the least prioritized on expansion, maybe crit and mp5 will be much better since we have a talent that allows us to consume one water shield charge when we crit. with the use of mana potions limited to 1 per encounter shamans will be like OOM before any healers do. on ptr i tried resto pvp and i run out of mana so fast. maybe because most classes deals alot more damage right now because were level 70 but maybe it will be more less mana intensive when we all reach level 80.

if were gonna spot heal then we might as well reroll a druid or a paladin instead. it will be either im going elemental or enhance on wotlk. i think i would go enhance for pve and pvp but still tentative well see what happens as the expansion release date comes closer. so far i think enhancement shamans will be the right path to go as far as i can see.

pvp as a restoration shaman on ptr sucks cause everything we cast gets dispeled. like earthshield , riptide , healing way , ancestral awakening. you know a 51 pts talent dispellable without any resistance that is just stupid. and the mana cost of riptide is high.

as for elemental i think elemental is also ok for PVE but not that nice for pvp especially small scales like 2v2, so i might be elemental for pve and enhancement for pvp. but who knows i might play resto for pve if things will go well 

Well, it's still in beta.

It's possibly (probably?) true that shamans will need to adjust to not doing 75% of total heals on raids like they do in TBC, but Blizz's stated goal has been to eliminate class dependencies.  They are doing this across the board.  The dps of dps classes is being targeted to the same benchmarks so that everyone should be doing nearly the same.  Blizz has said that they are reducing the emphasis on "utility" and "utility classes".  Healing is the same from what I'm reading.  Blizz is engineering the classes so that every class will have more or less the same capability.  In the case of resto shamans, that may make it seem like you're being nerfed because your class has been very overpowered for end-game raids in TBC.

Ghostcrawler has said over and over in blue posts that they want healing classes to be viable and fun to play.

"... and guess what?  If it isn't, we'll fix it." -- Ghostcrawler.

I think resto shamans will be fine in WotLK, and no less valuable than any other.

EDIT: grammar

marcti:

pvp as a restoration shaman on ptr sucks cause everything we cast gets dispeled. like earthshield , riptide , healing way , ancestral awakening. you know a 51 pts talent dispellable without any resistance that is just stupid. and the mana cost of riptide is high.

On this point, I agree.

The best attributes for PvP are mobility, mobility, cc, interrupts, mobility, damage mitigation, mobility, and mobility based on the current mechanics for PvP.

Resto druids in TBC have all of these features in great abundance, and so it is hardly very surprising that they are so capable in PvP.  Virtually all of their important heals are instant cast in TBC, enabling them to heal while kiting enemies.  Plus they have roots, stuns, interrupts, damage mitigation, immunities to roots, and some immunities to cc.  It's a very potent PvP class.  Holy Paladins have good mobility, damage mitigation and stuns, but are limited by their lack of instant cast heals.  Priests have no cc (unless you can count fear, which is weak at best), no stuns, no interrupts, are extremely vulnerable to dispels, but if spec'd disc they have damage mitigation and a few instant cast heals.  Resto shamans in TBC have interrupts but, as far I can tell, poor mobility.

 Mobility is so crucial because it mitigates the liability of lacking a desirable PvP skill or being vulnerable to dispels (even though they are so mobile, druids are not nearly as affected by dispels ... go figure).

 As the mechanics for PvP do not appear to be changing very much at the launch of WotLK, I expect that -- despite the changes to the talent trees and skills -- resto druids will continue to be the healing class to beat in PvP.

 

Specs. What do you guys feel about best resto specs? Im running: http://www.wowhead.com/?talent=hZ0x0hZx0euVxoEorIRz I feel this is nice for raid healing, not necessarily MT healing.

we almost have the same talent build but i have 1 point on cleanse spirit and 1 point on ancestral healing. points taken from natures guidance

 What do you guys think about this spec

 http://www.wowhead.com/?talent=hZ0xbhZxbxuVxoEorIkz

 I lost cleanse because simply..I'll leave it to those that have been doing it, don't need anything else affecting my GCD.

I took imp healing wave > totemic focus incase a tank needs some extra heals, and now that totems are up longer I can spare the mana savings on the totems, but I didn't take ancestral healing simply because I wanted to take Nature's Guardian and toss a pt into imp. Earth Shields.

I feel that for the most part we're still going to be casting CH mostly and 5 pts in tidal waves just wasn't worth it because I don't use it enough..it's nice, but not worth the pt investment imo.

Also I wanted to get pts over into ele for a little extra crit(thundering strikes) and ofcourse imp. shields.

 

Btw, what do you guys think about gemming. From what I've read on EJ and other forums, crit/int are looking to be really important for shaman for mana pool/regen purposes as well as it's increased benefits to our healing spells. I'm thinking about gemming  spellpower/int, spellpower mp5, any thoughts? 

I didn't think 2 crit was worth Improved Mana Shield, given you wont be using LW and HW much but even the use of Riptide and the 100% chance to get mana back on a crit seems worth it.

 i seem to disagree ,my build now have the 5 crit points on enhance and resto + riptide and i seem to like it. for pvp , on my pvp gear i have 34% crit un buffed

http://www.wowhead.com/?talent=hZ0xxZx0euVxogkrIRz is my build now

on pvp you all know that it is like a trend to just use LHW and riptide. and have water shield on all the time , i have the minor glyph that gives 1 more charge on water shield lol it helps , and with that being said i dont run out of mana on pvp. i crit so hard and you can imagine the mp5 buffs youll get on raids and the crit buffs. i might be able to get 40 to 50is crit % if i regem to crit. but too much crit is bad too. so i think 35% unbuffed is nice then lean on mp5.

remember when we crit we heal others too through ancestral awakening. and yes it seem not to have a cooldown because on pvp when i crit on my first heal it procs and when i crit on 2nd LHW it procs again and with the lesser healing glyph i heal alot and the proc heals for 1k non crit. heals almost 2k on healing wave or more. 

on raid i throw 2 riptides on 2 targets i feel i will use chain on like melee or something then when 2 riptide is up i cast 1 chain and voila 5k 3k heals on melee + karabor and earthliving its good. and got alot mana back too

ancestral awakening heal also proc karabor mace too so thats 2 karabor proc =)

one more thing i took lesser healing glyph and earthliving glyph , if only i could get the elemental weapon talent on enhance and still get riptide =(

 I believe you've seen examples of just how often I enjoy sitting in dmg and dying,  So I couldn't sacrifice the pts in Nature's guardian. to make imp watershield worthwhile because I only have around 22%crit UB and don't have the pts left to move out of the tree without losing riptide : ( 

But I like the notion of 35% crit. I'm already able to last longer in PvP with a few alterations of the spec (imp gw/, totemic focus, ancestral healing), and the kind of regen possible with your crit and more mp5 lets me finally rationalize only 1 pot per fight.....maybe.

 

2 pts in natures guidance is fine for pve

 new beta build!!!

Restoration

• Tidal Waves - Now affects Riptide.
• Riptide - Max rank healing increased to 1604 to 1736 and another 1002 over 15 sec from 1015 to 1099 and another 477 over 15 sec.

hohoho!