Hi, I’m a resto shaman main. I’m worried about all the changes that Blizzard made for the future expansion. Here I explain why.
-The pruning
Shaman has always been a class with a strong identity due to its utility. In Midnight, as resto, we will lose Thunderstorm, Totemic Recall, Earthen Wall Totem, Ancestral Protection Totem, Mana Tide and we need to choose between Poison Cleansing Totem and Tremor Totem. From my point of view, we are losing too much, but what makes me really sad is losing Totemic Recall. I think it’s a really cool talent and should stay with the 3 min version. Thunderstorm is another spell that is sad to lose, but I understand the reason behind. They want to reduce the amount of CC a team can have.
The healer abilities and talents that we lose are a lot: Cloudburst Totem (RIP to one of my favourite spell), Healing Surge, Wellspring, Tidal Waves, Tidebringer, High Tide, Ondulation and we have to choose between Ascendance (reworked) and Healing Tide Totem (buffed).
- The intended gameplay
A lot of power has been redirected into Healing Stream Totem and the new apex talents work well with it. I don’t know why, I don’t think it’s a funny totem to play around. HW and CH will have 2s cast time, the same cast time as now with tidal waves stacks. The healing rotation is almost unchanged: CH for AOE healing and HW for single target healing, Riptide every 2 CH.
Riptide will lose some power without tidal waves, but will gain the chance to proc a Stormstream Totem so it will be a good spell to spam. I think these changes will be ok for m+ content, maybe a bit boring, but that’s fine. However, in raids there are some issues.
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Totemic raid
The new Ascendance will be a weak cooldown for Totemic builds, especially in raids. The trouble is that totemic do a lot of healing with Surging Totem but, with new Ascendance, the healing done by Surging Totem will not be spread around all players. In raid content, it’s generally better to have lower throughput spread over many targets than higher throughput over just 5. On top of that, with instant cast CH and HW, mana efficiency will become a serious issue. HTT might be better manawise, but I doubt it’ll match the same HPS throughput. Unleash Life could serve as a decent short cd option. -
Farseer raid
I don’t see how the Whispering Waves build will stay relevant without Undulation, especially with Offering from Beyond being nerfed to 2 s. Maybe it could work if Routine Communication also interacted with the free riptides from Ascendance.
The standard CH spam build might be okay thanks to Windspeaker, and at least we finally have a decent Healing Rain.
Developers’ notes: […] We are adding Unleash Life back to the Restoration tree with some minor tweaks to its functionality. We still want normal spell casts to be impactful, but being able to respond according to the situation with a short cooldown allows for fun and rewarding gameplay. […]
Seriously, Blizzard? You bring back Unleash Life because you want to give Resto Shaman a short-cooldown option, but we still have to cast it on cd just to summon ancestors? This feels like a joke. Unleash Life as farseer is basically a “maintenance button”, not a short-cd talent. It was fine to summon ancestors with HST. Please revert the changes, or at least bring back the interaction between Unleash Life and Healing Rain, so if we need the Ancestor but don’t need the extra healing from UL, we could use it to do 7 ticks per second of Acid Rain instead of 5.
Some design suggestions
- HST should spawn Ancestors.
- UL: Heal an ally and apply Riptide. Your next healing ability has 30% reduced cast time and is empowered:
- HW heals for 25% more.
- Riptide spreads to another player.
- CH heals one more target and doesn’t reduce with each jump.
- HR or Downpour heals 10% more and affects 2 additional targets.
- Ascendance: Transform into a Water Ascendant, immediately healing nearby allies. While ascended, casting Riptide causes your next Healing Wave or Chain Heal to be instant and 50% cheaper. Healing Wave and Chain Heal apply Riptide to your target, and 30% of all healing done is evenly distributed among allies within 40y.
And to make some mastery build being slightly more relevant:
- Improved Earthliving Weapon: Earthliving receives 150% additional benefit from your mastery. The chance of triggering Earthliving is increased by your mastery.
- Conclusion
Overall Shaman has lost many of its unique abilities in exchange for some lazy talent. Some ideas are good but poorly executed. We have tons of CH modifiers, which will just lead to more overheal. We lack a cd that spreads our direct healing over 20 (or more) players, or one that redistributes our overheal. Our spot healing is mediocre (long cast times), our utility is average, our raid burst healing is weak, and we have huge mana issues, but hey, at least we’ve got a lot of passive healing! Maybe the numbers will look good, but the design feels bad.
Thank you for taking the time to read my post. I hope to receive some feedback and further insights.