tirsdag den 7. august 2012

Issues with resto shamans on the beta

Restoration shamans on beta: Major issues.

After being on almost every boss on the beta normal and hardmode I am in distress over the resto shamans situation, and allow me to explain why: 

1) Mana , it is an issue (as it should be at the start of an expansion), however, compared to every other healer we are way behind on regn. / spell costs, and despite of a recent buff we are still too far behind.
This leads me on to point nr. 2 which is linked with 1.

2) HPS, it isn't everything (however, with the removal of things such as Ancestral Fortitude / Inspiration it has become the only thing we can measure ourselves with). Our healing arsenal is not fitted for the upcoming expansion e.g. GHW is worthless compared to HS whenever Tidal Waves is up, and since Glyph of Riptide is mandatory, then you should have Tidal Waves up almost constantly.

GHW - Heals for too little compared to a HS with Tidal Waves up (Not mentioning the higher crit chance with HS, which should grant a higher mana return from Resurgence). 

HS - Our new "big spell" due to the standard low crit, and the addition of Tidal Waves. 

HW - Standard "filler" spell, and it does hit for a decent amount, however, I do believe that the mana costs of it should be slightly reduced.

HR - With the current model there is severe issue with it, and that is efficiency (a place where shamans are already struggling) from my testing it ticks for 1700-3900 at the cost of 32.340 mana, and with the current design of encounters you rarely would be able to get full durations out of your HR before people will have to move from it thereby making it even less efficient.

CH - HPM / HPS wise it is decent, however, it has a major flaw and that is the jump range, and I know you can get a glyph to make it jump further, however, using that is not an option since there is two scenarios a) Constant damage, and with a 4 sec CD in order for perhaps 1 extra jump is not a viable option, and in that case you would be better off by throwing Riptides all around. Or b) Big raid damage once a while, but in that case you could just wait for the passive heals or use HW / Riptides to get people up which would be even better (this is assuming you cannot stack). So CH only really work if you are stacked or if you mainly go for melee, and I really cannot see why we should be "forced" into such a playstyle compared to other smart heals as WG or CoH. Not to mention they are instant so e.g. CoH is 21% of your base mana, is a smart heal which means OH is close to 5%, WG is 27% also smart heal, but will be higher on OH due to it being a hot. CH 20% of base mana and with a 2,5 sec cast and a limited jump range, not to mention that you should throw a CH on a player who already has a Riptide (People who I mainly keep a Riptide on is tanks due to the constant damage and the "amazing" (sarcasm) Ancestral Vigor) which forces you to pick a target which may not have been taking a lot of damage therefore in order to make it more efficient you have to push more overhealing, brilliant aye ? (I am aware that when you got a feel of the fight you will know when to prehot people and thereby be ready for the inc. damage, but again you have to push overhealing in order to stay competitive).

EFL - Does in my opinion proc too little and not heal for enough plus when it decides to proc it will usually result in a massive amount of overhealing. 

HST - I must admit that I was looking forward to the change to it, and I think that the idea is right, that you will have to play actively instead of just placing totems every 5th minute or replace it after a 

Mana Tide. I think it is working fairly decent, but it should perhaps get a minor buff pr. tick, make it tick every second instead of every second or rework the glyph to giving it 15 sec more uptime effectively making it a 30 sec. spell. 

ES - Either needs a complete rework or to be scrapped. In the current form (and with shamans current mana situation) it feels worthless to put it on a tank in an raid environment since the ticks are so low, but then you put it on a tank for the 20% increase which is nice, however, since none of the fights are balanced around heavy tank damage it does become a little obsolete. Sure, your HW, HS and the Ancestral Swiftness + GHW will hit for a little more, but since most damage is raid wide it is not a big single target heal you will be throwing since a druid will have hots running, a paladin will have beacon and even if you had to spam the tank you would be oom faster than I can type "pleasebuffshamanskkthxbai". 
 I am also aware that other classes also get rape when they have to spam a tank, but none gets raped as much as shamans.  If it was reworked to something like beacon "When a target got Earth Shield 5-10% of your healing done will be transferred to the tank"  that would make it useful (and should help with the HPs problem). 

UL - Working as it should, and is finally buffing HR (Not that it really matter anyway). 

HTT - Our new throughout CD, and it is working nicely although it should perhaps get a minor buff to push it more in line with e.g. priests Hymn (Hymn: 45k - 80k avg. 50k, HTT: 18k - 36k avg. 20k from my data)

There should be made some tweaks / reworks of our current spells in order to make restoration shamans competitive or at least viable to bring into your raid. 

The major issue: mana. I've said it before, and  I will repeat it mana, mana, mana is something that is closely linked with our sub blood DK healing (Yes, DKs pushing 35-40k hps is nice) is that we are not able to sustain a decent steady amount of HPs, and when the shits hits the fan we shine for as long as we got Ascendance and HTT, but after that we can only throw some "perhaps it will bounce" CHs,  throwing Riptides on people taking constant damage, and if we do that we are going oom very, very fast. Now, is it because our spell costs are too high or because our regn. is too low ? That is a good question. Our spell costs is too high on some spells, and beside the reduction to GHW cost it is still not enough to make it worthwhile, and I am mainly looking at HR and to some extend CH in its current form.

But what about our regn. ? We rely on WS which has been buffed and given a glyph, which makes it slightly better but it is not enough. Resurgence then ? Not really with the current crit levels / the amount it gives back. I see two options for this 

1) Buff the amount of mana you gain from a crit.
2) Rework it into something like Revitalize (x% chance to proc y% mana with 10-15 sec. cd).  

And then there is the "old" model which to some extend relies on Telluric Currents (an idea / spell I truly enjoyed), and there is some pitiful remains of it in the Mist beta, but they are inadequate and I am rather frustrated with it. I like the idea that damage dealers can heal (Tranquillity - Hymn - Healing Tide Totem) and that healers can do some damage, and I do see some of the arguments for adjusting TC since the old 40% of your damage was shabby at first, but then became a godlike must have for fights where bosses too extra damage (with Madness as a prime example). It fits perfectly with the static idea of mana to make it a x%, however, the issue is that the x% is not enough when you realize that the spell still costs a fair amount of mana, and has a relative long cast time.  As of current you gain 6000 mana, but wait the spell costs 4260 and has a 2,5 sec cast time so it grants 1740 mana for a 2.5 sec cast, and with your passive regn. what do you moan about ? I whine about the ridicules low percentage it is of our current 300.000 mana pool (0,58% if I am not mistaken) that is just way too low. I know that it has been stated that they wanted it to be a mana neutral damage spell for healers, and hooray your succeeded but it is hardly (Okay, I lie I am spamming it like a madman due to my poor mana, which may or may not be attributed to my healingstyle). I don't mind pulling less HPs IF I on the other hand can contribute a decent amount of damage, and have mana for whenever I need to press my buttons hard, but currently ? Bring a monk and get the capability of twice the HPs for the same damage. If we provided a buff such as Ancestral Fortitude (Ancestral Vigor is hardly a reason to bring a shaman) our lower HPs would be "acceptable", but at the current state - bringing a shaman grants you a Mana Tide and puts your fellow healers in a position where they have to push more.
Furthermore, this approach of TC is completely opposite of Cata where it wasn't worth using for quite a while, and then became mandatory where in Mist it will be "required" due to your mana being that bad, and when you reach a certain amount of spirit you will throw it away because the damage in an raid environment will increase, and that usually means - larger use of big expensive spells and with TC being fixed it will become less and less valued. Or that is at least my take on it, unless it will be adjusted in every major patch. 

Mana Tide Totem - We started Cata as mana batteries, then it got nerfed and shamans got benched. I really dislike MTT in its current design since it does not provide any additional increase to the caster (200% hooray). You are popping MTT just as much for the sake of your fellow healers than for your personal benefit, which is a shitty way of doing it. Paladins - Plea, Priests - Shadow Fiend, Druids - Innervate, this is personal mana cooldowns and depending on the fight you would want to use them as many times as possible. So let us say that on an average fight you use your ability when you are at 85-90% mana and bam - 98-100%, and now you got 2-3 min. CD on it, but you have gained 10-15% of your mana whereas the shaman is now on 75% and if he pops his MTT you would lose out on the benefit of it so he has to way till he is at 65% in order not to waste the mana. I got an issue with this model of balancing it around it. Either shamans get an additional 200%, so they get 400% or MTT grants a reduced mana costs buff in order to balancing it somewhat out, or a +x% healing while it is up (My least favourite idea since we are already swimming in CDs). 

 

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