Problem#1
Resto shaman remains to be the only healer who dies in a stun with no trinket ready and im not sure why is that… stun reactions;
Hpala - trinket&bop&bubble
Hpriest - trinket&guardian
Dpriest - trinket&pain supression
Mwmonk - trinket&teleport while stunned in 9.1
Druid - trinket&Barkskin&frenzied regen proc when low
Shaman - trinket & NOTHING
FIX = ASTRAL SHIFT usable while stunned.
Problem#2
Both big defensives link&ascendance require melee range,shaman is literaly the only healer who cannot save a dying ally which is further than 20y away from him xD why!?
Earthen wall is the most mega crap spell ever, in 9/10 situations its just better to run than to sit next to that useless totem.
FIX1 = Increase the range/radius or decrease the cds on link&ascendance
FIX2 = Make earthen wall decent.
Problem#3 The raw healing is absolutely terrible, u would expect this class to have insane raw healing due to its obviously defensive CD flaws stated before, but no, its actually super weak, Resto shamans need to spend 90% time in arena actually casting heals, making all the offensive toolkit like purge/lava burst etc completely useless, as u cant get an offensive global… due to heals literaly doing 0 healing especialy the instant heals…
FIX = 5-10% raw healing buff
P.S. I’m not saying Shaman needs all those fixes to be competitive, But definitely needs some.
Astral shift absolutely needs to be useable in a stun. It’s simply unbalanced that it isn’t.
Don’t at all agree that shaman’s throughput is weak though. Riptide is very strong, as are totems and you have the option of spectral recovery.
I do think there’s an argument for saying spectral recovery should be baseline. Shaman is pretty easy to train without it but we have too many other compulsory talents keeping it out.
Now I think about it, it’s grounding that should really be baseline but that’d be giga OP in PvE so I get why it isn’t.
Astral shift in stun and spectral recovery baseline and shaman would be in a balanced state.
like how?
Pop healing stream, pop riptide, have earth shield, have max mastery, have a low target and pop trinket?
How is that even remotely useful? In pve, sure possible, in pvp not so much and this is what the thread is assumingly about
Spirit link and ascendance is just awful design overall. Always feels like only the initial heal of ascendance is actually doing anything. Casted heals or riptides in ascendance doesn’t feel better and often it is enough to pop ascendance to just heal everyone up and then you don’t need it anymore
i think if they buff healing surge by 20% in pvp and make astral shift usable while stunned it would solve a lot of problems.
Shamans always had the problem of getting easily trained to death and please for the love of whatever make dispel only dispel 1 stack of earth shield like it was a long time ago not the whole freaking shield if everything now is tied to earth shield (literally 27% healing increase and 300% from the legendary and soon even another pvp talent…)
That would be so OP. Shaman really doesn’t have a problem with throughput. It’s issues lie elsewhere.
I think you might just be bad at healing…
Edit: I just checked and you’re 205 item level with barely 30 games played this season! Come on dude! Surely you know this is a problem with you/your gear?
This I agree with. Output I don’t. No one can say shaman don’t put out massive heals.
With 50% mastery on low hp you’re easily hitting 15-20k depending on trinket proc with wave.
Surge heals plenty also and Will crit a lot.
The issue is and always has been no instant casts capable of sufficiently healing someone.
Riptide could use a PvP talent to remove HoT and make it full front loaded heal after dropping a healing stream for example.
Or ascendance making healing wave / surge instant cast for the duration. It should also either use the full heal on a single person if targeted. Or Aoe if no target. As the aoe heal in a group is pitiful.
The duplication genuinely feels terrible.
Earthen wall should provide an upfront full caster HP shield devised by amount of players. Up to a max of 5 for example.
A pulsing 500 hp shield in s1 was a joke when you get hit for 25k.
And I’ve said it before. But spirit link when dropped on a single player should immediately link the shaman to the player if no one else is in it. Right now it’s terribly tricky if only 2 people use it. Shaman included.
Earthen wall ideally should only lose a single stack on dispel. And as OP did say - so much healing is tied to it. During a stun earthen wall should heal x% more or immediately convert all remaining charges into a shield.
That or just give us astral shift back during stun. Monk has been addressed. Shaman needs addressed.
Shaman is ALMOST ideal. Interupts kill it tho.
how is that op? we barely even use healing surge at all.
Riptide heals for more than healing surge which puts you at risk of a lockout.
Nobody is using casted heals at all, they are not worth the risk. If you start casting heavily you are already on the backfoot and you are exposed to more cc and interrupts
Oh yeah that might be it.
Never complained about shamans being bad or me having trouble.
I hate to heal as shaman because the mechanics are stupid. Unfortunately it is so much easier to farm gear while being resto than being enhance.
I am a main enhance, yet managed to play over 2k being a freaking resto garbanzo shaman for like 150 games total. Makes me clearly bad Oo
Also I accept being a bad healer, but seems still much better than the avg. even though I barely played
Pretty low of you sorting to insults in your first post hiding behind an alt.
Which is pretty rich considering my whole arena exp is higher than yours lol.
just for the record I have more than 1 shaman so it is whatever dude. Playing venthyr resto compared to necro resto is like night and day, but CBA to switch while gearing up.
mostly I don’t notice it. But also usually you don’t need it as ascendance tops your group off in 90% of the cases (especially after spirit link)
yeah I think it would be better if they change it to the old stone claw totem glyph. So it periodically puts an absorb shield on you on lets say 20y range and if you attack the totem you get stunned.
Was a pretty cool totem, no idea why they removed it.
that would actually be a great idea if it always is linked to the shaman no matter where you drop it. People will probably complain by removing “skill” but meh
Train the blue has been a meme for years because of this. Shamans cannot get away from 2 melees and you cannot deal with 5 stuns and 2 interrupts before being deleted.
Playing shaman into ww/dk or arms/dk is the worst experience ever if you play with pugs that just do “hulk smash” rotation.
My holy priest has much less trouble to deal with those things. More def cds, more large instant heals, more utility.
Shaman is really good against casters but terrible into melees
I think choosing between the auto heal and 1min spirit walker is okish.
One issue is that it can be purged or I just get pseudo interrupted till my immunity is over anyways. Doesn’t feel great.
I don’t know, you need to boost your casts in order to have any value. While you are boosting them (e.g. with rip tide, unleash life and healing stream) your target dies. I spam heal and they sometimes still die.
Comparing this to the 3 other main healers running around (priest, druid, pala) they can top off their target with a lay on hands instant spell several time, make them immune or reduce their dmg taken.
Shaman is really lacking in this department.
I am not a main healer but playing holy priest and hpal on the side, they are sooo much better into standard cleaves and playing with pugs.
Shaman feels to be more punished if you play in uncoordinated teams as you have a hard time picking up their mistakes (or your own for that matter). Shaman feels more punished for mistakes than other healers
I usually main healers (this season being the exception) and I really don’t see a problem with shaman’s casted heals. You’ll always have it empowered by tidal waves and flash flood since you’re using rip tides liberally.
The big weaknesses shaman’s have is that you have no way to react to a stun, you HAVE to pre-empt it and if you have two melee up your bum interrupting and stunning you, you can have a really hard time getting casts off and you are reliant on wave/surges for throughput.
Rsham was bullied out of the meta by warriors, rets and rogues this season.
Tidal waves and flash flood yes and that is mainly why it worked quite well in the past.
Now we just have too many modifiers to make the casted heals better, which in return makes the base heals not that great
earth shield 27% (roughly)
healing stream conduit (30% ?)
unleash live (35% ?)
tidal waves
flash flood
and then we of course have mastery and crit on top of that.
Basically it means that your heal do either 10% of someones hp or maybe 100% of someones HP.
The same way I dislike cd stacking for dds (e.g. rets) I dislike this play style for healers as well. As healer it is more problematic as you need to predict stuff much better.
Rshams have massive problems against 2 melees. Warrior alone are okish. Rets delete me no matter what I do. I still get 12-15k crits through my wall. Root totem is meaning less and earthen wall does nothing against big hits. Stuns and pseudo interrupts are a pain and rogues are the bain of any shaman since dawn of time anyways. Going to be really fun with the upcoming assa meta.
Not only we cannot do jack against vendetta, but we cannot dispel poisons either, are vulnerable to stuns and when you do get a heal out it will be flat out reduced by 60% or something thanks to the new stupid talent they get.
not sure if I going to bother trying to heal this ;|
I don’t agree that healing modifiers are a problem, particularly when many of those are so easy to apply. The spec would be very boring if it was just one button and boom, someone is topped. Rdruid are the same, they need hots rolling to get that big mastery boost to their single target heals. Monk’s mastery is similar.
One thing I do agree with is that shaman’s are going to have an extremely rough time with assas rogues. Given that shamans don’t have a short-cd DR and rely more on throughput, that’s going to be tricky against the low-cd sharpened blade. Assas can also pretty much apply perma-slow with no effort and whilst a druid can shift it and monk can port, the rogue will be able to maintain near 100% uptime on a shaman.
Maybe wolf should shift slows, not just cap them at 80%? Idk.
Astral shift is on a 1.5 min cd, so i would agree it being usable in a stun, but that’s kinda all we need, i feel shammy are strong when played with the correct partners
