Hi guys I was just wondering how you guys feel about the current state of shaman healing in a mythic raid environment at this current stage of the game.
Week w/e of patch release and so many weeks into corruption vendor.
I just came back after not playing since legion so I’ve been back around 2 months and been gearing myself up through all the usual avenues etc, farming echos so now I have like 70% crit unbuffed (Which is pretty high I would say overall although not world record). Got myself to 477 equipped Ilvl with decent stats etc.
When I first started playing which was like march time I felt pretty strong, I still feel fairly strong when I am pugging HC content for instance, but in my current guild I am playing against 3 very good healers, and because of this I just feel like shaman doesn’t really have a fighting chance.
Our raid set up is 2x Holy palas and 1 holy priest + me all same sort of gear level, im slightly more inexperienced as ive only killed some of the bosses twice or even once now up to n’zoth, however either on bosses that before I was healing alright, im falling behind massivly, barely even getting a sniff in I would say.
Im just wondering if its something that is happening to other shamans aswell where with all this corruption I feel like we are massivley behind certain other healers in general in terms of numbers?
Or is it just me being bad in mythic?
So yeah was just after maybe how you other guys out there might feel ? How did shaman perform before corruptions existed as I missed the whole expansion?
Do you think we will be better in shadowlands?
Shamans aren’t very good at spot healing but we excel in aoe healing and have the most powerful raid cooldowns imo.
Spirit link totem has an effective hps of 0 (unless you have the azerite trait that adds healing to it) but it’s massively useful if you pop it at the right time.
We also have great utility, which doesn’t show up in raw Healing numbers. We’re the only healer with interrupt. We have an aoe stun and slow (very useful during add phases), and earth Elemental can soak up a lot of damage from adds. Tremor totem can also be powerful to dispell fear etc.
I would also encourage you not to see raids as a way to beat other healer’s numbers. It’s perfectly fine if there are differences because healers often contribute in ways that aren’t reflected in their numbers.
Being competitive is what drives me to always better myself though, I agree with what you are saying about the utility we provide however with paladins auras and demon hunters darkness and personal defensives I feel spirit link isnt the spell it once was.
I also feel our mastery is somewhat useless atm paladins and priests are massivley out performing us.
I guess its just a funny time for the game with people stacking inneffable truth etc and azerite traits, hopefully I will feel more useful in shadowlands.
Our holy pala same ILVL is doing like 170k hps vs my 100k hps and he can do it on the move
You are up against 3 HPS pumping classes, Paladin is outright broken (Logs don’t count the damage reduction of Devo at all) which is why most guilds run 2 of them and Holy priest pushes out numbers cause…well that is all they have really.
Since our Mastery is feast or famine in that kind of a setup it is all but nullified, people will not be on low enough HP for long enough for your mastery to work consistently. Not to mention that N’zoth is quite bad for Shaman with all the movement that is required. We are tuned around this, which is why Uldir was the worst state Rshaman has been in a very long time.
Short version: It is not you, it is just how broken Paladins are.
As mentioned above, we’re AoE healers with a nice bag of tricks that don’t count towards the figures. I rarely pay attention to said numbers and rarely bother with raids any more, yet I’ll casually beat non-competitors by using some well-timed abilities. If competing, you likely won’t win, nor should you think that you have to. Healing is just keeping people alive, after all, and Shaman are perfectly capable of doing this - they just won’t do it through the insane numbers others pump out.
Of all the Healers I’ve played, I still deviate back to my RShaman and will be maining that in Shadowlands. I wager they are just behind Druid in terms of ease-of-levelling, especially as they have great single-target burst to blitz through everything, and I greatly prefer RShaman in M+ compared to, say, Resto Druid or Priest. RShaman’s potential damage-contribution is just one of many things kept under the radar.
I’m not going to pretend by any means I am the best healer in mythic+ but I have just timed my first 19 key this week and I felt the options for dealing damage to be limited. However I +2’d temple 18 and that was fine as a healer doing zero damage.
At the end of the day weather people choose to accept it or not its very much a game of numbers these days in terms of both DPS and healing, and I cannot think of one good reason to take me to a raid other than the fact I am consistent and reliable, when 2 healer classes are pumping out 40k hps more than me and yet our parses are the same %.
Seriously considering a reroll for shadowlands which is a shame for me as I enjoy the mechanics and playstyle of the shaman, just feel like we need a blanket 10% increase across the board on all healing if not more. Im running 77% crit chance aswell so without that what would I be. 77% lower.
There’s a lot of factors to consider, more-so if you’re pugging rather than playing in a premade (which is what I do – every team I join is a roll of the proverbial dice as a solo-pug Resto).
As an above-mentioned solo-pugger who only returned after a mighty-long break (since before corruptions even existed), it takes me quite a long time to generate RIO. Meanwhile, some of my friends (who have been playing with a set team since early Legion mythic+) have a Resto Shaman pushing 20-22’s quite casually with Battle-Shaman spec rather than full-on healer spec.
To them, it’s a matter of co-ordination - something you don’t often get in a PuG (most of which won’t even use voice-comms, let alone speak at all). Battle-Shaman is perfectly capable of keeping people alive but also pumps out very respectable damage (which, obviously, is a great thing in a timed setting).
A lot can also depend on the dungeon itself and/or undesirable affixes, on top of having spiky-health tanks or damage-dealers eating corruption sandwiches between mechanics and/or lower DPS making fights go on longer than necessary (and all the other joyous PuG elements) making it difficult to get a breather for anything in some cases, nevermind actual healing - but a co-ordinated group would definitely prefer having you pump out that delicious resto-shaman DPS at every available opportunity, of which there will be if the team is half-decent.