I have been playing resto shaman in SoD since Phase 1, and wanted to give some feedback on it.
Context
I have been playing the game since US open beta, and did anything from being a 13 year old kiddie nightelf hunter to (very little) mythic raiding. Since the end of BFA, I played a resto druid in m+, almost exclusively in PUGs. I reached 2830 rating in DF season 1, which is achievable by timing slightly more than everything on +20, which isn’t terribly hard. While it allowed me to finish in the top 3%, I am nowhere near the skill level that is required for actual pushing. I quit in DF season 2, because healing felt horrible. With the SoD release being announced, I managed to get my tbc classic guild back together to do 10 man raids, and we were somewhat hyped for it.
The way we raid is rather unusual, as we intentionally do not look up any guides on the new raids, and do not use boss mods. We enter the raid blind, and figure out the mechanics and strategies ourselves, and I make weakauras during the raid to replace boss mods. On a side note, I can absolutely recommend raiding this way. We managed to clear BFD in the second ID, I think, once our hunter hit lvl 25 and wrecked everything our initial caster comp couldn’t kill. We cleared gnomeregan in the first ID, and recently merged with two other guilds to do 20 man raids. We got to 5/8 on Sunday, and 8/8 on Tuesday in the first ID.
I play this game to raid in a nice guild, and not much more. I don’t really care about PvP, leveling, or other parts of the game, so my feedback is only valid from a raiding perspective. Also, I want to point out that telling people to play other games is cringe. I like SoD, and would like it to be better in some aspects.
Actual Resto Shaman Feedback
Resto Shaman has some things that work, and some things that don’t work. I’d like to go through both of these.
Runes
Healing Rain slaps, and has always slapped. I have no idea why anyone would use overload. Healing Rain is the only spell in the game that can somewhat consistently keep the 25% armor buff up on multiple targets, and the hps on healing rain is completely fine.
Shamanistic Rage is so broken that it should be a book. If three out of four specs have no alternative, and the fourth only doesn’t take it because their most basic toolkit is on the same slot, then this is a design flaw. Using Ancestral Guidance feels great, and Earth Shield is probably ok, but I don’t know, because there is no reason to use it, ever. If Shamanistic Rage were a book, we could have the wildest of things, like priority burst from resto shaman, or a healing cooldown from ele and enhance. But we don’t, we just slap Shamanistic Rage on our thighs and never think about it again. Just macro it to your Healing Rain, and don’t even track the cd.
Water Shield is fine. We can use the mp5, and I don’t expect there to be more than one healing rune per slot.
Spirit of the Alpha was 100% created and named by Andy Tate. There is absolutely no way that a human with a functioning brain would cook up a name so stupid. We, as a species, have known for decades that there is no such thing as an alpha wolf. In 10 man raids, this rune was mandatory, and it sucked. In 20 man raids, I will probably use ancestral awakening, but I don’t expect it to be very useful. Healing Rain and Riptide don’t proc it, and those two spells contribute the most to my healing in most situations.
Power Surge is just passive mp5, so it’s really useful, and really boring. Not giving resto shaman a single rune in Phase 2 was really weird. A new rune in this slot that affects aoe healing might be a good addition. Some ideas are given in the totems section.
It is borderline criminal that it took until Phase 3 to implement Riptide. Using Riptide feels good. The only flaw I see with it is that it is somewhat rare to have the target be a useful chain heal target right after Riptide. I think the spell would feel better if it didn’t interact directly with chain heal, but had that functionality shifted to Tidal Waves, possibly in another form, like reducing the fairly long cast time as it does with Healing Wave.
Mental Dexterity should have been hotfixed by now. I’m glad I don’t play ele, who finally got Flame Shock range increased slightly, but not Earth Shock, making the Flame Shock range buff meaningless, but it doesn’t even matter, because they’re a melee class now. Tidal Waves slaps, though. Again, borderline criminal to wait until Phase 3 with that.
Throughput Issues
Resto Shaman has had throughput issues for the entirety of SoD. Throughput isn’t everything, however. Resto Shaman is the only healer that can somewhat consistently proc the 25% armor buff on multiple targets, which is really good for tanks. The issue with that is that physical tank damage is not relevant in Sunken Temple. It’s a very strong buff that does very little.
In terms of aoe healing, Healing Rain is at a reasonable level, but druids are completely broken now. Efflorescence can be placed quicker than Healing Rain, unless you have the 3p bonus, and heals for more. Combined with Wild Growth, druid aoe healing is so strong that shaman aoe healing is actual trash in comparison. One of the reasons for this is that chain heal, while strong in era, is not strong in SoD. The cast time is far too long, and only hitting three targets is too little to compete with druids.
Another factor in limiting the aoe healing of shaman is that Healing Rain has some very silly issues. First, there is no indicator on the ground. There is literally no reason for this, as the ability has a perfectly useful indicator in Dragonflight. Nobody knows where my Healing Rain is, so nobody will try to stand in it. Efflorescence, which is already stronger than Healing Rain, has a range indicator. I would be very interested in having a blizzard employee sit down and justify that mind boggling design choice.
Further, even though the 25% armor buff isn’t very strong due to very low tank damage, it does more than nothing. This incentivizes shamans to place healing rain on tanks, which is the first group to not be filled with melee dps if the raid deviates from 8 melee and 6 range dps, making shaman miss out on even more aoe healing. Healing Rain should heal across groups, but have a target cap of 5 instead. Having a shadow priest in the tank group should never reduce the effectiveness of a spell by 20%.
In terms of single target healing, Shaman seems to be doing somewhat well. However, this is because single target healing is not really relevant in the current raid, so everyone does well enough. My druid has about 250 bonus healing, compared to the 350 of my shaman, and heals 50% more with Nourish than my shaman does with Lesser Healing Wave, for about the same cost. Healing Wave heals for about 30% more than Nourish, but costs about 73% more mana. The only advantage shaman has is the very low cast time on Healing Wave after Riptide, but that is not enough to justify the absolutely abysmal state of the throughput.
In the end, I want to pump. I want to heal my raid so hard that sometimes the skin tears. Unfortunately, Blizzard decided that only druid and priest should be allowed to do that, even though priest and druid buffs arguably outcompete shaman buffs. Mana spring will never be enough justification for dog tier throughput, when priest has fortitude and spirit, and druid has motw and innervate. The only useful buff that shaman brings is Shamanistic Rage, which is raid wide (and should be raid wide), and is already covered by three other shamans in my raid. More is better, but my contribution is not that large.
Totems
Totems are boring and weak, and pressing them feels like a wasted gcd, even if it technically isn’t. Mana Spring restores 300 mana to the group every minute, while Shamanistic Rage restores 540 per minute, but to the entire raid. Healing Stream heals very little compared to other aoe healing, and cannot be targeted. Mana Tide is also quite weak in comparison, because Shamanistic Rage is about 2.5 times as strong over the 5 minutes that mana tide is on cooldown, and hits substantially more targets.
Totems could be changed to not be permanent buffs, but to have a tangible effect on the game when placed. Healing Stream could be turned into a strong mid-cd aoe heal. Mana Spring and Mana Tide could be merged into one mid-cd totem that regenerates mana, or places a damage reduction on the raid. It could be replaced by something like Spirit Link Totem.
Essentially, placing a totem should make me feel like I’m actually doing something useful.
Mathematical Illiteracy
I am somewhat convinced that Blizzard only hires people that don’t even know middle school math, but still has one boomer mathematician working there who is constantly losing his mind trying to keep the game running. This is largely based on their fundamental misunderstanding of how RNG works, which became very evident in Legion.
I don’t mind pressing Flame Shock as a resto shaman, if it is useful to my healing. I mind pressing Flame Shock when it has a 20 meter range, a 17% chance of being resisted, having a near zero probability of proccing Power Surge at a useful time instead of it being wasted, and being expected to refresh it every 12 seconds, and thus using up 12.5% of my GCDs for a damage spell.
Ancestral Awakening doesn’t do negative healing. It just only procs off of critical hits, which I can’t control, to do a minor amount of healing.
I don’t mind working for my runes. I mind grinding the same two mobs for over an hour, along with 15 other people on my layer, because the droprate is lower than that of a TF binding.
Someone really needs to tell Blizzard what happens when you multiply a bunch of very small numbers with each other, and what the tails of a distribution are. Make things more deterministic. Things can take time without devolving into a chore. Getting the Menty D rune should not cause a Menty B.
Why Are You Complaining?
Because I think SoD is quite good, and I enjoy it. Sunken Temple slaps, even if the last 35% health nerf on Avatar was too much. I just think that it could be improved quite a bit with a few minor adjustments. Inb4 someone tells me to play some other game.
I got snarky in the mathematical illiteracy section, but overall I think my feedback is based in the reality of the game, and I make useful suggestions for improvements.
