A way to address resto shaman in shadowlands (and shaman as a whole by extention)

[Illussio-turalyon]

I have been thinking about a way to provide feedback on the issue of shaman. While a bunch of changes towards elemental en enhancement have been very welcoming i believe restoration shamans are in a really awkward spot right now.

So why are restoration shamans in a bad spot at the moment?

They are only good for 1 aspect of PvE.

The problem i see with resto shaman is the fact that they are only good/great at sustained AoE healing.

Now, this is good for raiding. But here is the problem, every healing class is good at AoE healing. While we are not questioning a restoration shaman’s toolkit for utility and even the spirit link totem these are not actually things that help shamans out here.

For one the mastery of shaman simply does not translate well into the game. Partly because of the philosophy on how healing works as well as the encounter designs.

Back in the old days damage is not as bursty and dangerous as they are now. We want to be at 100% at all times and be healed back up instantly. Shamans are not good at this. But every other class does have it. by means of either mitigation and/or healing.

Lets take paladins for example. The reason they are so beloved in the current patch is the ability to use glimmer of light and they incredible spot healing to pretty much be favorable in all situations. Not to mention they got 2 mitigation abilities(1 is AoE that surpasses Spirit link totem) In the form of Devotion aura and Blessing of sacrifice.

What we are ending up on is a mastery that does not translate well, shamans are lacking spot healing and a mitigation spell. There is a disconnect into how restoration shaman works now.

Even mistweaver monks have a better mitigation ability called life cocoon and that’s one of the lesser ones. Not to mention they can change into potent single target healers and excellent AoE healers. Mistweaver is in a great spot because of that. and their mastery does not hold them back either.

What do i purpose to change and make it better?

I think first order of business is redesigning Mastery while fitting into the shaman class identity.

I purpose the following :

Mastery: Enhancing waters. You increase the maximum health of 5% an ally you heal and increase the healing you do on that ally

5% would be bare minimum. so here is my reasoning :

Increasing the maximum health of an ally has always been something that has been a part of shaman for a long time. So why not make this mix into mastery? it happend with druid. so why not shaman?

increasing healing would offset the extra hp an ally gets. Also we don’t wanna make the maximum hp extra too crazy so the extra healing is there to offset that.

This wouldn’t break the meta that much, but it will do a lot more for restoration then increasing healing based on missing health because that will never be truly utilized due to the nature of WoW in it’s current state. It would work on classic, not Shadowlands.

Alright sir, anything else?

Yes, but this will also translate into the whole shaman class.

I purpose to make Ascendance a baseline cooldown. This cooldown is amazing i don’t see why this wasn’t the case in MoP when it was first introduced.

The whole ability is making you turn into crazy elemental figure and it fits PERFECTLY with the shaman class. Why wouldn’t you make this baseline?

Not only that, this is a great cooldown for shamans to have to offset the single target issue they are having. Also the change to mastery to offset in dungeons where the shaman is healing alone.

You can now get different talents into the talent tree and have rows compliment AoE or single target healing so we get choice on how we actually heal. Right now that’s not really the case anymore because single target healing has been shamans biggest weakness for a long time because there hasn’t been a good specbuild for restoration that can compete.

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Ok, these are some ideas i have for shaman. i hope this feedback will be seen, if anyone has thoughts or criticism please share them.

[Хильдерик-wyrmthalak]

I wouldnt trade plus healing mastery for bonus hp. On the battlegrounds people are low all the way and it makes a huge difference in critical situations.
Im okay with class limitations and being an immobile tanky raid healer. It’s not like shamans suck, more like the others are way too OP with all their insta casts and mobility. Ofc it would be great to hot like a druid and shock like a pally, but what about class identity then.
I woud prefer a flat numbers buff. Like if its only good at raid healing, it must be the best raid healer.
Hey if they are back too roots, how bout to strip everybody of such an iconic spell like HEROISM. Nah, not gonna happen.

[Illussio-turalyon]

Yeah but doesn’t that reinforce my statement about mastery in its current state about not translating well?

if we now buff flat numbers up you then see that low targers get healed to full all the time.

we already got riptide. but i find that we are not great at one thing but good at 1 thing and worse at everything else.

valid point about mastery.

ascendance baseline! im calling for it ^^

[Rewasha-draenor]

Speaking about PVE (I don’t do PVP since a couple of expansions ago) I agree that shamans are in a bad shape.
5-man content at high level are way to punishing that other classes. Doing a +14 with my monk is a walk in the park, doing the same with my shaman is a bloodbath.

In raid environment we are good, nothing to say there. At least we can compete on healing and bring a good amount of utilities.
Our single target heals though are non existent.
We need some kind of change to address that. I don’t think a single covenant spell can work. We need something we can swap out and in like a talent, specialised in single target heals.
Something like a huge buff on the riptide hot component or another hot, or drastically reduce cast time of direct heals.

Left like this would be another expansion of “a 460 healers queued, oh it’s a shaman, pick the 420 druid instead”

[Mogomir-aegwynn]

I agree with Ascendenz which should be baseline but i disagree with our mastery which is very usefull. Especially in high m+.

I would like a change that our mastery hits a way earlier. Like if the healed person is at 90% it still should make a difference.

I would like an overall healing increase of all spells. Sure the masterypoint / mastery% rate have to be changed than.

Another good one would be healing tide totem to heal 100% if it only heals 5 man content like the priest cd.

Riptide should have a much harder healing hot and echo of the elements MUST BE baseline. Otherwise the cool new talent wont see any use.

I dont see any usage for downpour either. This should work like the queens ability in legion and trigger twice to be atleast considerd using.