Resto Shaman DF talent feedback

Classes Shaman
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Hello, I’m a resto shaman who does a lot of mythic raid and previously mythic+ content and I wanted to give my thoughts on the current shaman talent tree. I have also previously been a healing officer and so have a familiarity with the balance of healers and the specific strengths and weaknesses they possess.

That being said, my opinion is not gospel. I’m sure some shaman mains more knowledgeable than I will disagree with me on some of the below but here are my thoughts on the tree anyway:

THE GOOD:

  1. For the most part, I would say the tree has good nodes. There aren’t too many things in there where I think “wow, this is really bad.”

  2. Pwave is a very welcome returning spell for resto shaman. I think it’s the most interesting covenant ability for resto and it’s definitely the most useful since it plugs the long-standing gap in shaman’s toolkit - lack of spread AoE healing options.

  3. Adding utility to shaman is really nice. With SLT being slightly more situational than Barrier or AM and shamans comparatively having less HPS than other healers (except the ST-focused holy paladin), I think having other reasons to bring a resto shaman is really good for the spec’s viability. Stoneskin totem is a particular highlight for me although it might be more useful to have the option to give it a longer CD and cover an entire raid rather than just one party given how many conflicting party-wide spells there are in the game (Zephyr, Windfury, Stoneskin, Mana Spring just to name a few.)

  4. Clearly, some thought has been put into M+ specific talents too. I like how the M+ talents are (for the most part) grouped together nicely and are logical in their layout (MotE excepted). I also like the introduction of some DPS-focused spells from other specs like Stormkeeper

  5. The change to unleash life is great. Nice job on that. I think CH and wellsprings bonuses don’t compare in strength to the ones for riptide and healing rain and (in combination with pwave) healing wave which will most likely be the spells we buff with UL right now.

  6. The Ever-Rising Tide is an interesting inclusion albeit one that really only works because of how mana efficient we currently are.

  7. Quality of life changes like Ancient Ankh Talisman and Gust of Wind are great and also double down on the class fantasy. Good stuff!

  8. Minor thing, but thank you for giving us Thunderstorm! I always wondered why resto druid could have typhoon but we couldn’t have Thunderstorm.

THE BAD:

  1. Currently, Tidal waves they’re not even given a second thought by most resto shamans although I appreciate there are strides in the right direction on this I think more could be done to incentivise using them. Similar problem for paladins and their infusion of light.

  2. The layout of the tree is a bit odd in places. Riptide is a core spell for our spec and this is reflected in the many talents that change or work alongside it. So why are some of these riptide-related talents so far apart? Why are wavespeaker’s blessing and torrent literally on opposite ends of the tree? Why is master of the elements, not with the other M+ focused talents like Stormkeeper and acid rain?

  3. I may be alone in this but I have a big issue with Chain heal. It’s a clunky & dated spell with limited utility in spread AoE healing situations, a very long cast time and an astonishingly high mana cost. At the moment it’s only cast as a filler AoE healing spell and even then, I have to be careful how much I use it because I can very easily oom if I start spamming it a lot. Affecting chain heal cast time with tidal waves is a good idea but it’s nowhere near enough IMO. Until this is addressed, I’m personally not really inclined to take any DF talents that only buff chain heal.

  4. Point investments. This is not specific to shaman and seems to be a recurring theme across most of the healer talent trees I’ve looked at (not all though, the druid one is chef’s kiss). There are too many 2-3 talent point nodes and they can make some areas of the tree feel like poor value. It does not feel good to me to have to invest 2 points in Overflowing shores to get Wavespeaker’s Blessing. Pwave is a great spell and I love all the things you’ve included with it but 4 points of investment? Seems a bit high considering how cluttered our tree is. Why is Lava surge in the spec tree and not the class tree? Why do I have to spend two points in Earthen Harmony to get Ascendance? What if I don’t want ES but want Ascendance?

  5. Please allow us to talent into both Earthen Wall Totem and Ancestral Protection Totem if we want to. They’re two very different things that serve two very unique (and useful) purposes in a raid. They should not be mutually exclusive.

  6. Nature’s focus is absolutely terrible and should be nowhere near the bottom of the tree. It’s the only potency conduit in SL that saw absolutely no use in any content and it will never get taken unless it’s reworked or massively buffed.

  7. Earthliving. A resto-themed weapon enchant effect is nice and something I didn’t even realise I wanted until I saw it. Even with its upgrade, however, it is laughably bad and no one is going to put 3 points into this when it’s already so hard to get everything you want in the tree. I would just make the upgraded version of this spell baseline and leave it at that. It would have to be OP for anyone to take it right now.

  8. I think the class tree has too many mandatory picks, pointless filler nodes and other things that aren’t worth the points required to get to them. There are way too many things in here at the moment which is both a blessing and a curse. It means we have a lot of utility choices which is nice but we also are forced to lose things that we already have. Part of the culprit is nodes like Fire and ice, ancestral defence, elemental warding and Nature’s Fury. These nodes represent 6 points that will always be taken and should just be part of the class or not there at all. They don’t represent interesting choices IMO and should not be in this tree when you already have so many things you might want. Shaman already has a metric ton of spells to put into the tree, you don’t have to fill the tree out! Then you have things like Winds of Al’Akir. Ok, the ghost wolf speed bonus is nice and all but I can’t remember the last time I had 3 totems out at once. It rarely ever happens so half the talent is already dead on arrival. I don’t want to take it but gust of wind is just so good that I feel forced to do so anyway. Why is swirling currents in the class tree and not in the spec tree? Are enh or ele shamans ever going to take this? Are resto shamans ever likely not to take this?

THE UGLY:

  1. Earth Shield is a bit of a contentious spell in the community. It’s not very engaging and is not really that impactful at all in raids. While the elemental orbit talent is a good step in the right direction, you may want to iterate on this spell further like you have some others as it is starting to feel a bit stale.

  2. From an M+ perspective, we’re losing a ton of damage. The reason this is not in “the bad” is that this could be ok if every healer class is balanced in this regard. I freely admit we probably did too much damage. Even with all of the new spells, however, I just cannot see how Acid Rain, Stormkeeper and Master of the Elements will come anywhere near Vesper totem (with covenant legendary & conduit) and Deeptremor. Our kick and our damage were two big reasons for shaman’s viability and neither is unique to us right now. I think Shamans may get a rude awakening in terms of their place in the M+ meta which is a shame because before Shadowlands they sucked in five-man content.

  3. I have mixed feelings about spells that tie damage spells to healing throughput.
    Examples of this are Focused Insight and Master of the Elements. For M+, these talents will probably feel fine but they have the potential to ruin the raiding rotation for me. I’m not one of those “healers should only heal and not DPS” kind of players but I also think healers should be encouraged to DPS during moments of downtime or when their damage is needed during a DPS check (e.g. Kael’thas Shield). There is a world right now where our “ramp” rotation in cloudburst could be:

Pwave → Unleash Life -->Flame Shock (Focused Insight) → Lava burst (MoTE) → Cloudburst → Healing Wave…

and quickly you can see how clunky this can get after a while. Especially given that there are a fair few non-instant spells there for a class that doesn’t like haste. It’s also not always possible to pull off exactly this rotation. If little Timmy is standing in the fire again and I have to healing surge him ASAP then the above rotation falls apart very quickly and my cloudburst is potentially ruined. If the healing increase is a nice bonus that we get from time to time then fine but if it’s tuned wrong then we could be casting DPS spells every other spell and that’s not going to feel good at all. MW monks, holy paladins and disc priests have much better ways of doing DPS healing in my opinion.

  1. Nature’s swiftness is a useful spell for us but why is it just a flat-out worse version than the druid one? Same CD, mana cost & cast time reduction but not the 100% healing increase? Think of the synergy with cloudburst, unleash life and pwave!

  2. Bring back Deeptremor but this time, make it so that earth elemental no longer taunts or generates threat when that power is active. It solves all the problems with that legendary.

CONCLUSION:

Overall I think the shaman talent tree is pretty good but could still use a bit of work to really make it exceptional like the resto druid or preservation evoker trees appear to be.

EDIT: Two comments I made were based on Cloudburst totem not being replaced by Healing Stream Totem as this was not obvious from the tooltip. This however, has since been clarified as working exactly as it does on live. I have therefore removed these comments as they’re now redundant

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I agree with most of your comments. I usually play Ele and come from a M+ perspective (good a healthy amount of experience on Resto, though) but we face similar problems. Some of the talents are flat out dead from the beginning or not impactful enough to be of any value. Yet you need them to reach actually useful things. I suppose that is fine to a certain degree though. Not every talent can be highly impactful, otherwise we might quickly go into a direction of super op.

What I find really interesting for Resto, is the possibility to now take Ancestral Guidance. I assume this will be default pick and can create massive burst windows if played correctly with Cloudburst etc. I do feel like the added and very flexible utility might give Resto a good spot in the meta. More totems could be raid-wide, though.

In terms of dps, Acid rain is target capped, which is a shame when compared to Consectration, Sunfire etc., but Resto finally got back some reliable AoE that can passively tick in the backround. I do believe this and Stormkeeper can help offset the lack of Deeptremor a bit. It will not reach current levels but in all fairness it was indeed a bit high right now. Also I do think that it is hard to compare with Disc and Pally as much of their gameplay and healing (esp. Disc) is tied to their DPS. So I personally find it accapteble to see Disc DPS being higher. On the flipside, they have other issues, e.g. quick AoE burst healing or spothealing, that they can have trouble with. Shaman is much stronger in that area.

I do fully agree with your questions about class vs. spec tree. Why is Lava Burst not in the class tree and something like Swirling Currents is?
Big quesion for me.

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Thank you for your response it was a good read :slight_smile:

Some of the talents are flat out dead from the beginning or not impactful enough to be of any value. Yet you need them to reach actually useful things. I suppose that is fine to a certain degree though. Not every talent can be highly impactful, otherwise we might quickly go into a direction of super op.

To an extent I agree, I think that you can have interesting traits that are also not overpowered though. I almost feel like the class tree in particular is very cluttered. It has a lot of filler nodes that are powerful and will most likely be taken but they take points away from the utility of the tree. I don’t think this is as much of an issue for enh and ele because there are less throughput nodes for those specs than there are for resto. At the moment, it would be quite difficult for an M+ resto shaman to take all the utility they need for a specific dungeon and affix set without sacrificing throughput.

You can actually see this in the vod of Max’s roundtable discussion on the shaman trees (link: https://www.twitch.tv/videos/1538699064?t=01h24m33s). The actual building of the Ele class tree starts at 01:51:47. They concluded that only 17 points are “mandatory” picks that you take all the time. For enh tree (starts at 02:02:51) only 18 points are mandatory. For resto (starts at 2:10:05) however it’s 28 points. This is largely because there are more resto specific throughput increases but also because a lot of these are very low down the class tree and so require a larger investment in points. Some resto specific examples of this are things like:

  • Totemic Focus
  • Focused insight
  • Totemic projection (although Enh takes this too)
  • Nature’s Swiftness
  • Swirling Currents (although the other specs will take this to get to AG)
  • Ancestral guidance (although the other specs can also take this, it’s more important to resto imo)
  • Totemic Surge
  • Earth Shield & Elemental Orbit in M+ healing

I think some of this power could be shifted into the spec tree but would need to be baked in to existing talents as the spec tree has enough nodes already. Perhaps they could replace the earthliving nodes that no one is using right now?

What I find really interesting for Resto, is the possibility to now take Ancestral Guidance. I assume this will be default pick and can create massive burst windows if played correctly with Cloudburst etc. I do feel like the added and very flexible utility might give Resto a good spot in the meta. More totems could be raid-wide, though.

I agree. On the whole, I think it’s going to be a good time to be a shaman player in general. All 3 specs are looking good so far but obviously this will be highly dependent on tuning and class balance. The sheer amount of utility we bring however does bode well for us.

In terms of dps, Acid rain is target capped, which is a shame when compared to Consectration, Sunfire etc., but Resto finally got back some reliable AoE that can passively tick in the backround. I do believe this and Stormkeeper can help offset the lack of Deeptremor a bit.

I still think they need to do more. If you look at the other healer class trees there is always at least one (in some cases, several) capstone talents that cater to M+ DPS.

Take druid as an example, they get:

  1. Their M+ specific covenant ability (Adaptive swarm) and its legendary upgrade
  2. Convoke and its legendary upgrade
  3. Their current BiS DPS legendary for high level M+ (Circle of life and death)

They also don’t lose much of their utility or damage abilities and still retain Rake, Rip, Sunfire and moonfire which make up the bulk of their current damage. They also have the option of speccing into boomkin abilities like Starsurge and Starfire.

Holy priest does lose boon which is huge for them but gets Empyreal Blaze, Searing Light and Burning Vehemance as late stage DPS talents in their tree. Discipline has a whole side of the tree dedicated to shadow themed DPS spells (Shadow Covenant, shadow versions of spells like penance, divine star and halo). Both priest specs also have access in their class tree to mindgames and DPS oriented spells like shadowfiend and shadowflame prism that certainly holy didn’t have before.

By contrast resto shaman, gets a capped acid rain that can’t be repositioned and does about the same as an unbuffed vesper totem (i.e. no lego or conduit) in terms of damage on max targets. They also get stormkeeper and could get Master of the Elements but probably won’t. There is pretty much nothing significant in the class tree (although I’m not asking for more throughput in the class tree) from a DPS perspective. It just doesn’t seem like it’s balanced at the moment.

I would like to see either a new capstone talent or possibly a replacement for deeply rooted elements (currently against wellspring, will never be taken in PvE). A deeptremor that prevents your earth elemental from taunting or a vesper totem with legendary effect would go a long way towards balancing our DPS potential imo.

Also I do think that it is hard to compare with Disc and Pally as much of their gameplay and healing (esp. Disc) is tied to their DPS. So I personally find it accapteble to see Disc DPS being higher. On the flipside, they have other issues, e.g. quick AoE burst healing or spothealing, that they can have trouble with. Shaman is much stronger in that area.

I’m ok with this in raid but it’s a problem in M+. I can see you’ve done some +23s so you’ll know as well as I do how impactful healer DPS is on the M+ meta. The highest DPS healers will always get taken and I think shaman will be moving away from a DPS orientated playstyle in raids which I’m ok with but it needs that DPS option to remain viable in all content.

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Thanks for the link, i’m gonna look at that later!

I totally agree that healer DPS is mandatory in M+. It just sometimes feels weird that my Disc is currently not able to dish out as much dmg when the spec is designed around it :smiley:

On my other thread about the Ele tree I touch on the class tree and find the capstones a bit lacking. Ancestral Guidance might get taken by everyone once people realize the offhealing potential. The other two seem to be a bit lacking/too situational. I really like a more totem-based branche as it really highlights the class fantasy (personal opinion). However, I would have also liked to see a damage based branche.

Even Holy will be able to go into full Mindbender/Shadowflame Prision mode (class-fantasy where?) should that tree go live. Likewise I suppose you could easily shuffe some more dps into that class tree. There are already a few overlapping talents anyway between the spec trees like Stormkeeper or Lava Surge. So why not combine them into the class tree and design something else or declutter the spec trees? I could also imagne Ascendence as a capstone in the class tree. But yeah … there are already a lot of nodes so you’d need to combine/delete some.

In terms of Resto dps in general I’m not sure how good or bad it will be. Resto is more of the classical healer unlike Monk/Pally/Disc that can opt into higher dps builds for hps. I only play since Legion but I suppose Resto never really had something similar. It’s single target is quite competetive but we surely miss some more power in AoE and maybe something that doesn’t require full damage commitment. While I personally don’t really like Vesper Totem from a dps pov, it would surely make for a fine addition to the Resto kit. But giving it two covenant abilities might also appear to be bland and uncreative. Maybe give Earth Shield some effect/talent that quakes the ground around the target every now and then? :smiley:

As a last note: I personall don’t quite like the idea of a non-taunting Earth Ele. I know it’s round about as tanky as a piece of paper and Deeptremor was really fun, but it would feel weird for me if it didn’t taunt anymore.

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I really like a more totem-based branche as it really highlights the class fantasy (personal opinion). However, I would have also liked to see a damage based branche.

I have mixed feelings about throughput in the class tree. I think the issue with resto right now is because the class tree has too many throughput options that feel mandatory compared to the other two specs. I would like to see a bit more pruning of the resto throughput increases in the tree that can then be made baseline or bake into existing nodes in the spec tree. This would free up more points for us in utility and would put us in line with our ele and enh neighbours.

While I personally don’t really like Vesper Totem from a dps pov, it would surely make for a fine addition to the Resto kit. But giving it two covenant abilities might also appear to be bland and uncreative. Maybe give Earth Shield some effect/talent that quakes the ground around the target every now and then?

If they can come up with a better alternative that does similar DPS than the current iteration of vesper (with legendary/covenant buffs) then I’m all ears. I personally didn’t mind vesper totem and don’t understand the hate for the playstyle but I accept that not everyone likes it.

I think the issue with earth shield is that it’s just not fun and engaging to play around with. You plop it on the tank and leave it there and it’s kinda boring. It just sorta sits there and moans at you every so often to refresh it. It’s very bland and unimpactful compared to similar abilities like paladin beacon.

As a last note: I personall don’t quite like the idea of a non-taunting Earth Ele. I know it’s round about as tanky as a piece of paper and Deeptremor was really fun, but it would feel weird for me if it didn’t taunt anymore.

Have to agree to disagree on this one. What is the point of a self-destructing damage CD? What is the point of a mob that taunts but then can’t handle the damage? I honestly think earth ele is in a weird place at the moment. It doesn’t taunt bosses but does taunt trash but it dies to literally nothing but also has all of your damage tied into it? Just commit to the earth ele being a DPS CD or a defensive CD and not both imo otherwise it’s self-defeating and it feels bad to use.

At some point class fantasy does have to take a back seat to good game design otherwise the class is no longer fun to play.

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Heavy Rainfall and Spiritwalker’s Tidal Totem should be baked into Healing Tide Totem and Mana Tide Totem, to make them worth of one talent point spent

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Heavy Rainfall and Spiritwalker’s Tidal Totem should be baked into Healing Tide Totem and Mana Tide Totem, to make them worth of one talent point spent

I think baking them in would be too strong but I would like to see these effects in the resto tree instead of some of the unused stuff like earthliving (which should be baseline)

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I agree, Totemic Projection in the class tree should be baseline too btw

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Well … I personally don’t really like Vesper Totem from an Elemental pov because you need to actively use healing spells to make the most out of it. All the while we already have quite a bit of ramp up time with Storm Elemental which where Vesper just slows you down even further. As Resto its super fun though.

On the Earth Elemental and Shield, I totally agree with you. Earth Shield is just bland (at least it does something though when compared to Lightning Shield). The Earth Elemental is in a super weird spot. I would like it to be tanky and actually matter, in high keys it just get’s oneshot unless you pop it on the boss with Deeptremor. I would like it to be a bit of an external tank CD if you wish … but for that it should actually be able to tank. Maybe make it take a total of X hits b4 it dies or something?

Looking back at BfA I can remember that Resto did decent dmg. It lacked in AoE but made up in single target. So I can imagine that Resto might not be all that bad in the end. Other healers also lose some throughput. A ton of Disc dmg comes from Boon right now with the massice cdr on it. Same for Holy. Pally was bonkers at the start of SL bc of Ashen. So maybe it balances itself out in the end.

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Not that the devs read EU forums, my 2c:

  1. Why no Vesper totem? This is the only real deal covenant ability, giving both good offensive use as well as great healing.
  2. If you insist on peewave (why?), at least give it some offensive potential. Right now it has precisely none.
  3. The tree needs to be culled by roughly 5 points. My recommendations:
  • bake Earthwarden into the base skill node, seeing as how ELW is very lackluster as is
  • bake Nature’s Focus into some other CH node or just drop it, it’s bad
  • bake Water Shield into Resurgence or vice versa, why separate these at all?
  • change Undercurrent into a single 1% talent.

All in all I’m slightly concerned at the lack of damage.

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Yeah it’s definitely something I would only recommend for resto. I’m kinda confused why they decided to put Pwave in each individual spec tree rather than put it in the class tree where all 3 specs (who all love it) could get to it easily but hey, class tree is busy enough as it is.

On the Earth Elemental and Shield, I totally agree with you. Earth Shield is just bland (at least it does something though when compared to Lightning Shield). The Earth Elemental is in a super weird spot. I would like it to be tanky and actually matter, in high keys it just get’s oneshot unless you pop it on the boss with Deeptremor. I would like it to be a bit of an external tank CD if you wish … but for that it should actually be able to tank. Maybe make it take a total of X hits b4 it dies or something?

I can see this going one of two ways. Either:

  1. They double down on earth ele being a DPS CD, prevent earth ele from taunting with deeptremor and be done with it.

  2. They keep Earth Ele as a purely defensive option, maybe buff it a bit but it’s there for the 15% health increase it gives. Then they can turn deeptremor into a different themed elemental. I could imagine something like a Tide/water elemental with raging waters surrounding it. Might look really cool and be themeatically bettter for resto who were the only spec to ever use this power anyway afaik.

Looking back at BfA I can remember that Resto did decent dmg.

My recollection was very different. A lot of our damage right now comes from borrowed power and back in BFA, we had terrible spot healing ability which was addressed in SL. I don’t expect shaman to be as bad in M+ as they were in late BFA but I also think we will lack damage in our current form. Especially in AoE but also a little bit in ST since vesper was a huge part of our ST damage too.

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Think I’m going to post a link to this thread on US forums. EDIT: nevermind, tried to but they don’t allow you to unless you have a paid US account. Ridiculous.

I think either vesper or some other damage source needs to be implemented. Vesper however was quite divisive. I personally quite liked it but I know other shamans who really didn’t. Deeptremor is cool and would help a lot in AoE but it never came close to the power of vesper. Maybe in the future they’re hoping to curtail healer damage in M+ in which case deeptremor on its own would be fine. Druid in particular, however, is looking very very strong in terms of DPS in my opinion. They have lost almost none of their M+ related borrowed power and have gained some too.

Pwave is not supposed to be offensive though. I’m really glad they brought it back. It fills a massive hole that shamans have always had in their healing toolkit. I honestly would consider changing class if they hadn’t gave us pwave.

Agreed. Made the same suggestion in my post(s).

Agreed

Also agree. Tbh water shield on its own is so bad they could do away with it altogether and just leave it as a passive but I know that thematically it’s probably better to have water shield as an option so merging them is the better option imo.

Might be a bit overpowered imo but I agree they do need to cull some of the tree at the moment and make some stuff more easily accessiable.

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On your point 4. of the bad stuff.
I TOTALLY AGREE. Like it’s so outdated and slow and boring… The perfect solution would be to make Wellspring talent the new default for Chain Heal, and this with a 8 sec cooldown due to noe target cap.
Then make a COMPLETE new talent for the missing Wellspring in the talentree.

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