4.3 PTR builds and shaman setbonus – Soo much loooooove.

So according to various posts this is currently the 2- and 4-set bonuses which is what we restoration shamans can look forward to in 4.3. 

·  Restoration, 2P -- After using Mana Tide Totem, the cost of your healing spells are reduced by 25% for 15 sec.

·  Restoration, 4P -- Increases the duration of Spiritwalker's Grace by 5 sec, and you gain 30% haste while Spiritwalker's grace is active.

Let us look at the 2-set bonus first, okay – Mana Tide should be used either for heavy burst healing situations or for regn. a lot from a Telluric Currents build. I like the set bonus in some way, but I do have an issue and that is: If the bonus is made with a focus on fights with sudden bursts of damage, and that quite a lot of mana will be required to spend to keep people alive, well – 25% less mana spend on spells is nice, however, you will need to repositioning your Healing Stream totem before “the big bang” since it is simply way too much healing wasted if it isn’t up. I know that Blizzard wants to make the totems mechanics more interesting, but compared to the druids innervate? And yes, I clapped my small fat hands when I read about the Wild Growth “adjustment”, but I do have some issues with the bonus being tied to Mana Tide.

The 4-set bonus is quite interesting, and is effectively a 2min on demand heroism for you and you only, but you will also have to think more about how you use Spiritwalker’s Grace – Do you use it for movement or for pure throughput? That will depend on the fight, but I think this is a very important step in order to put shamans more in line with the other healers, and a throughput CD is what I have longed for ever since I parted with my paladin just before Firelands, and whenever I pressed “Tree of Life” on my druid.  

I think that compared to the other healers that we have received some quite useful set-bonuses, and in spite of our 2-set is pretty much alike all the way around, well – if this goes live, dr00l – we won the 4-set. Druids – Chance to get more OH ? Priests – Chance to Absorb more or Holy Word uselessness (yey ? I hardly know anything about holy), and Paladins – More healing on your AoE spell which is now becoming a cast.

Restoration Changes for 4.3 as of ptr. 14732.

• Ancestral Healing got an extra effect - heals you cast increase allies' maximum health by 10% of the amount healed, up to a maximum of 10% of their health.
• Cleansing Waters - The heal effect can only occur once every 6 seconds.
• Riptide healing effect has been increased by 50%, from 3725 to 5585.

Cleansing Waters – Is a PVP change from my point of view, and I honestly doesn’t give a rats ass about it.

Riptide – I suspect that due to the changes to the healing received by the healing over time effect, and the fact that our mastery, haste, crit levels rise that most people will aim for 2005 for the extra tick or 1858 for goblins. Since Riptide usually is in top #5 of my healing spells I welcome this change very, very, very much.

Now, let us talk about the elephant on acid which just entered to room and went bonkers and forced the developers to give the restoration shamans steroids, superpowers and changes to Ancestral Healing.

Assuming this effect stacks, you will during heavy AoE situations with people clustered up and you spamming Healing Rain on CD while filling with Chain Heals and EFL rolling on everyone along with the 2-5% extra crit you will get from the higher itemlevles (This is my estimate, I could be quite off, but if this goes live I will assume that crit will become a far, far more interesting stats) and the rising HP levels to 150k – 170k for “none tanks” that is just 15-17k more effective health (When the stars align, and assuming this stacks with the various 4-set bonuses which the tanking classes will be granted … Well, I assume there is some heavy AoE fights ahead and since restoration druids just got the shaft in regards to Wild Growth, which in some way is fair enough because they are getting close to being able to spam Rej. more or less constantly and not really having to look at their mana bar.

Or – We could be paired with Disc priests and thrown on tank healing since I assume tanks will hit close to 280.000-300.000 HP and with our “magic”, well – I assume you know I mean.

I have my doubts if there isn’t coming some kind of restrictions or changes to this because it make a shaman quite mandatory for a raid, however, on the other hand – Burn druids know your place !