My response to the shaman feedback thread.

In response to the shaman feedback thread on EU and US forums, this is what I had on my mind.

What type of content do you focus on?

 PVE

If PvE, what type of PvE?

Semi-hardcore Raiding 25man.

What are your biggest quality-of-life issues?

Searing Totem. The shamans incapability to compete with resto druids / priests at raid healing whenever people are spread due to Chain Heals jump range. The need to apply Earth Shield due to Nature's Blessing whenever "hard" single target healing is require for more than 4 casts - 18% makes us competitive tank assistants, but an almost 20% increase if Earth Shield isn't on the target is way too much !

What makes playing your class more fun?

Being the jack of all trades. Being able to dish out damage in form of Fire Elemental and Lightning Bolts, if specced into Telluric Currents, and not being penalized for it in terms of mana instead of standing around as e.g. druids /wanking whenever the incoming damage is low. The +100k crits with mastery build.

Water Shield and in spite of it might sometimes be an aggravating thing to do, then I still like the idea of you have to make a choice a) Regn. or b) Heal. Furthermore, it does also make it important to look forward in the fight when you got 2 stacks and you got a free GCD or if you always wait to it has expired to refresh it. Totems - I like the uniqueness in spite of the fact that almost every buff is covered.

What makes playing your class less fun?

The frustration of our mana compared to other healers and a "usefulness" of Mana Tide (Which should be changed to something like the priests Shadowfiend and buffed in terms of regn.). The AI of Fire Elemental / Searing Totem. How we are penalized in our capability of raidhealing whenever people aren't stacked. A lack of self cooldown except Stoneclaw Totem (If glyphed).

Being the jack of all trades does sadly also lead to the fact that we are not exceptional at anything and you have to struggle in order to do your assignment which another class will be able to do with far less effort.

How do you feel about your “rotation”? (Rotation is the accepted order in which abilities are used to maximum efficiency.)

I am currently pleased with the amount of spells at our disposal except Chain Heal and its range or lack of so to speak. I like the idea of Tidal Waves, Unleashed Element, positioning of totems for maximum usage. Perhaps a little to focused on keeping Riptide on cooldown, but then again Holy Shock, Wild Growth and Pennance performs the same role - more or less.

What’s on your wish list for your class? Change to Chain Heal to something like Wild Growth or Prayer of Healing or just a buffed range in order to make it competetive and not a waste since it will only hit 2 people. A buff to our regn. model so that we are brought in line with the other healers or a minor buff to the regn. given from Telluric Currents. A "on use" cooldown as Avenging Wrath or any form of increased throughput for X amount of time like Palas - Divine Favor / Avenging Wrath, Druids - Tree of Life, Discs - Power Infusion. Because one of the major issues I have is that I am not capable of increasing my throughput whenever it is needed except for keeping Healing Rain on CD and hope that I positioned it perfectly and hope people have learned that blue is good.

Healing Stream Totem becomming raidwide instead of party wide.

What spells do you use the least? Chain Heal and Healing Surge.

This is what I posted, but as time has passed I have been thinking a little more about it, and what could be done to bring shamans more “in line” with the other healers.

I think the biggest issue is Chain Heal, and the lack of usage on bosses where you cannot be sure it will hit 4 targets (This is where I usually throw out a GHW instead), and the regn. model which is modeled around Water Shield and the change to Resurgence which with our current crit percentages just gives too little regn. back, and that has “forced” a lot of shamans who doesn’t like Telluric Currents to take the talent, however, I am one of the shamans who love the talent and I don’t mind dishing out damage !

Nonetheless, one of the things which I think would bring shamans most “easily” into line with the other healers would be a “burst” cooldown like Avenging Wrath / Divine Favor / Tree of Life, because the only reason e.g. druids are so high on the meter is ToL WG – RG – Tranq – WG RG – Lb Lb Lb – RG on Clearcast and WG, which if they got Shard of Woe, which on a side topic gives them a ludicrous amount of MP5 and with the amount of extra HoT ticks it just gets too good whenever you use it along with ToL. Where as shamans “peak” when people are low and they got HR on the ground and smashing their CH key, but there is no “I NEED MOAR HEALING” button, and I do truly believe that it would bring shamans in line.

Furthermore, make Healing Stream Totem raidwide – that would also bring us “more” in line.  

Snipehealing – Meter whoring ?

Being the person who diehes out the most healing per second (HPS) does not mean that you are the best healer e.g. a resto druid can hit his Rej. and WG spells constantly on the raid, but that doesn’t help to kill the boss if he is assigned as a primary healer on a tank, and despite he will be pulling higher numbers of recount / skade and world of logs  then he is more of a disadvantage than an asset to your group. However, there is also another side, and that is the people who only focuses on their assignment and ignores his or hers opportunities to help out with e.g. raid healing or tank healing when you are assigned to the raid, and some will call it snipe healing and that is just utter bollocks. People who claim “snipe healing” or “meter whoring” is usually the people who does not have this urge to do their job and then help out wherever he can and thereby optimizing the possibility that the boss will hit 0 HP before your raid. 

Should a druid assigned to the raid not help out with hots on the tanks ? Should a paladin not use Holy Radiance in the raid when being on the tank or Light of Dawn? Should a shaman not use Healing Rain if they are assigned to a tank? Or should they not keep a Riptide on the tank if they are on raid heaing ? Should a disc. priest retain her/himself from throwing a shield on the raid members who is dangerous low on HP with a large AoE attack incoming?

Healing is all about teamwork and if your assignment(s) is safe then why wouldn’t you help put the others?

Furthermore, meter whoring or snipe healing is mostly due to that person a) is faster than person b) to heal the person who has taken damage and in spite of it might not be person a)s primary objective isn’t it every healers objective to get people who is on a low percentage HP to a safe percentage (90-100%). However, there is also a huge difference between meterwhoring on farm and on progress and let me explain why. On progress your mana is usually stretched to the limit and you have to make decisions at the end about who you want to “save” and if you wasted all your mana on people who already had a Rej. on them or a Wild Growth or Riptide then you making your raid suffer due to mana and healing is always a limited resource during progress whereas farm is where you got the 5-10ilvls higher and most guilds use the same amount of healer while the DPS is several thousand higher which means that you got more resources when you start the fight and due to the fight lasts less time – well, you can do the math. 

However, I hate doing farm bosses with the same amount of healers because I like to be challenged and with the same amount of healers you hardly have to think about using your efficient or your inefficient spell.
We started out with 6 healers on Shannox, 7 on Beth’tilac and 6 on Lord Rhyolith (We had to switch to 5 during our first kill due we lacked damage) and 6 on Alysrazor. We are currently running with 5 on Shannox and unless people play like retards we could take one more away. We did accidently use 6 healers for Beth’tilac and it wasn’t really an issue and I will bet my socks that we could do it with 5 without making it hard.
Alysrazor is a retard check and something which our melee sadly fails to realize that Brushfire, Tornadoes and interrupts is important, but it is easily 4 healable if people can minimize their damage and you use your raid cooldowns during “burn phase”.
 

I wouldn’t touch the 5 healers we use on Baleroc due to every fucking week someone fucks up and we need the “backup” and extra healing.
Majordomo – We started out with 5 when we initially started and took it with 4 and honestly 3 is sufficient and will be slightly challenging. 

Ragnaros – well, we use 4 healers and Paragon used 3 and some guilds uses 5 (which is now safe due to the recent HP nerf), nonetheless the most of the damage there is controllable and people are usually responsible for their own death “Hello Mr. Englufing” or “Suuuuurfing the Lava Wave yeah – oh dead”

The phase with Molten Elements can be a little tricky, however, a large part lies in positioning of the seeds and the usage of raid cooldowns without people being fatter than usually and like the engulfing animation (Which I do hope that the retard who designed it gets fired at, burned and then pissed upon)

In regards to Ragnaros he just emphasizes how good Shard of Woe still is and that it almost is a necessity for the healers in order to cope with the healing requirements, and that leads me onto the silly design of it and the amount of Regn. it is worth for a resto druid in regards to a resto shaman and how much it boots the HPs – I doubt hardly any restoration druids with a WoL rank above 50 (On HMs) without SoW since it is so much regn. that you can reforge all your spirit to either mastery or haste, and with the 1min use you can quite easily get an extra tick on Wild Growth which during Tree of Life is amazing.

I saw a post on MMO-champion where we were encouraged to post what is good / bad in regards to all the classes and my focus is of course on resto shamans.
People complain that they need to put down a totem every 5^th minute? Sure, because you are bad and forget it – I enjoy that part and it also means that you have to think about where you put your totem unless you want to reposition it all the time.
Water Shield needs to be refreshed too much and it is annoying to refresh it as often as we must. I disagree – It makes the choice more interesting – Get Water Shield up vs. casting a heal, why would you want to simplify everything it is just retarded and seems like people
wants the Wrath Model – press a + b before start and then continuously 1 until the boss is dead.

I currently only have one issue with resto and that is Chain Heal and the jump range is way too low in regards to the design of the encounters. And I would enjoy that it A) Becomes a heal like a druids WG – Covers a group like a priests Prayer of Healing or simply increase the range with 5-10 yards in order to make it competitive.
 

It is "just" farm, and making bosses harder ?

It is ”just” farm bosses. 

My guild has been on 6/7 HM 25man for a while now, and with them progressing on Ragnaros HC (4 healers – pala, druid, priest and shaman) and due to I had IRL stuff to do during the first week of progress I passed my spot to our other shaman, but back to the title. 

With people getting better and better gear while killing the bosses more and more often you would assume that the bosses becomes easier and easier, and the amount of wipes each week should go down and only be contribiuted to by DCs or retard players. However, currently for my guild farm mode has become a pain with other bosses than STAND STILL AND DERPS. 

On Shannox people aren’t trying to get away from Rageface with Blink, Teleport, Sprint, Dash or whatever which after 3 minutes means that Rageface is two shotting people – Brilliant, people die and the kill gets uncontrolled because you want to stand still and do derps, Good Job. 

Alysrazor – It is a retard check, and we fail several times each week. Melee eats Brushfire as if it was fucking candy, and is more focused on their recount than interrupting the adds.
Meteors seems to come as a surprised every time for our ranged DPSers or at very least for 5 out of 7 of them. Lava Worms spawn randomly and is impossible to see when they spawn – oh wait, fixed positions and a big fucking animation – IT IS HARD. Using 3 Combat Resurrections before the “burn phase” and then we got people who still haven’t figured out how to avoid tornadoes because it is a random mechanic. This piss easy boss takes 3-4 wipes every fucking week and the abilities seems to come as a surprise for people every damn week.

It seems to be a general attitude that farm is easy and I can play with 60% of what I can while watching telly and not paying any attention to the screen. And it is pissing me off that people are unable to just focus every 10^th minute when we reach a boss and then focus for 5-9 minutes.

Then there always is Baleroc, which we always needs 5-9 wipes on because healers is retarded and tanks aren’t thinking about how we can make the fight easier. This week we got a druid and a warrior tank, and they started out with the warrior taking Decimation and the druid tanking – WHY ? Why on earth would you take the Block tank to take Decimation it is fucking retarded. Let us make it harder to kill the damn boss !
Then there is the healers and their capability to do their job, and ability to stack Vital Sparks. We got a restoration druid who seems to have problems with anything else than standing still and keeping Wild Growth on CD while spamming Rejs. on the raid, and the druid has still not figured out the importance of getting a decent amount of Vita Spark stacks when you need to switch to the tank. Usually when I play my shaman I start on the ranged, where a shadow priest is soaking the first for the full duration, and with heroism I get between 50-60 stacks depending on how retarded I play. It costs med 30% of my mana, but I gain the advantage of being able to throw out more HWs while on the tank and thereby it is an investment which pays of. However, if you are on the melee who switches after 13-14 stacks you should still get 30-40 minimum (When they switch it is outmost stupid not to jump to the shadow priest and spam 3-4 heals on that guy since he will be at +15 stacks at the current point), however, with heroism the druid was able to get 15 stacks.. yes 15 and then switched to the tank where I was purely using GHW because our paladin wasted his CDs. My “switching buddy” decided that he needed more stacks and waited till after the second shard, which meant that at the time that I was released from tank duty (Always fun to heal 3-400k HP tank with 40k normal GHW and 100K crits when the stars align) which meant that I was at 10.000 mana when I was supposed to heal the shard people. That it was a kill is beyond my understanding because people play like retards on acid who only got one arm, but that might explain the +100 wipes to the seriously hard ability Engulfing on Ragnaros HC – forward, backwards what TO DOOOOOO.

This brings me on to another part, and that is that we run with the philosophy “Bring the player not the class”, but that does apparently also mean that there is no need to use the utilities that the different healing specs give for a given encounter – let’s say Ragnaros. 

On Ragnaros they run with a holy paladin on the tanks supported by a restoration shaman, who by the way also is assigned to the majority of the right sides raid members. And on the left we got a restoration druid a long with our priest who has decided that he should play discipline. However, is that optimizing your healing assignments? Hardly, a discipline priest is in my opinion the strongest tank healer, and with the “bursts” given by Traps a shield of 30-40K just smoothes out the damage, and furthermore if a priest throws out overhealing that crits it is not entirely wasted, however, does a shaman throw out overhealing it is wasted except if he crits and AA heals a target.
Furthermore, a shaman is best used on people who is standing close together, which our melee does so HR will become useful along with CH which also will give the shaman room for some Lightning Bolts to regn. a little with TC which gives more “room” for high burst healing due to higher mana.
But hey – there is no reason to make the boss easier, and it is not like Divine Aegis is utterly wasted on raidhealing if people doesn’t take damage within 15 seconds, which most of them will not. This brings me on to our restoration druid who seems to think that everything can be mended with a Rej. even if it merely 10.000 damage which needs to be healed up, and that means that Rej. on a fight like Ragnaros is +50% overhealing which is a lot, and when you complain about mana and fail to see that you might need help.  

That will be the end of my rant in this post. 

Telluric Currents and healers doing damage - wut ? Part 2.

Back with some more information regarding Telluic Currents on Baleroc (should be Balecockblock) and Majordomo Loothelm and "Ragnaros the healer bencher". 

For Baleroc I switched to my holy paladin (which is pretty much BiS pre Firelands geared) in order to make the fight easier and a kill more likely for us, and putting aside the rustyness I can say that it feels a lot easier to make it work as a holy paladin than a restoration shaman on this fight, and Divine Favor and Avenging Wrath is just immensly powerful whenever something goes south (Ello Tormented). 

Here is a video that I frapsed during our kill 

I have killed Baleroc on hardmode on my shaman, and wih the tactic that we currently are using with the first ranged shard is being soaked by a shadow priest (nom nom stacks) I am usually able to push my stack of Vital Sparks to 50-60 for the first shard with heroism and a rotation being somewhat Riptide - HW HW, UE, Rip, HW HW, HS, Rip, HW HW - Rip, UE and then HS spam with Rip and UE on CD in order to get as many stacks as possible. It does take a chunk of your mana pool, but you have to look at it as an investment because the more stacks the harder your heals will hit and thereby you can use more HWs than GHW in the beginning and thereby saving quite a lot of mana. However, the best advise for that fight is /stopcast and that is honestly the biggest problem for a shaman because a disciplin priest overheal can grant Divine Aegis, holy paladin gives Illuminated Healing and a restoration druid relies on Clearcast procs a long with hots and the current design "wants" the druid to push out significant overhealing whereas a restoration shamans overheal is just completly wasted (beside Riptide).

However, you can find a use for Telluic Currents on this fight whenever you are on the "soakers" there is a little downtime between the spawn of the crystals and there can you throw in a few Lightning Bolts. 

Moving on to Majordomo Staghelm (Loothelm) where we ran 4 healers on the kill (I specced elemental with 23% hit due to no dps avaliable) and with the right tactic we took it within 15pulls. And with the buff you get then Telluic Currents is just retardedly good. Our last kill when I played restoration I gained around 250.000 mana of 32 Lightningbolts which is equal to roughly 7,6k mana pr. Lightning Bolt, and I had a DPS of 4100 (with an active time of almost 60%), however, this boss would be fairly easy to 3 man heal and I wouldn't be surprised if some guilds already is two healing it and a wild guess is that before the next content you will see a restoration druid solo healing it.

For Ragnaros you want Telluic Currents because a) It is hard on your mana, b) Damage comes in "bursts" and whenever you are in the "safe" zone (lol Guys - Taking trap in 3 *BANG* 2  1 * 3 people dead to knock back) there isn't any reason for 4 people to stand and be throwing out heals all the time because the only thing that grants is wasted mana and massive overhealing and less damage, which you can ill afford.

I forgot that I had frapsed a few of our kills from resto shaman pov: 

I haven't frapsed Shannox because it is such a dull fight, and I did only fraps our Baleroc kill on my paladin and Majordomo is me playing elemental, and sucking badly at it.

Telluric Currents and healers doing damage - wut ?

In one of my first posts I talked a bit about "healers doing damage" and how I could see some interesting uses for Telluric Currents, and that was back in the beginning of Cataclysm, but since I changed to a holy paladin just around the time my guild started to progress on hard modes I didn't really get to examine the usages of this spell. However, I am now back playing restoration shaman full-time now and while my guild is slowly progressing through Firelands, I want to give my point of view on Telluric Currents for what encounters it will be useful, and not downright dumb to take the talents. 

This is from my experience with the Hard Mode encounters.

Shannox: Hardly any use and because I am healing the person who is getting raped by Rageface I have very little "free time". 

Lord Rhyolith: At first glance it would be a stupid idea to spec into TC for this encounter because of the damage reduction, and when the damage reduction is reduced you end in a DPS / Healing race. However, you can get quite a lot of the talent if you can communicate with your fellow healers, and here is why: The Spark of Rhyolith (I cannot recall if this is the same on normal, however on HM this does apply) stacks a buff on themselves called "Infernal Rage" and it increases their damage dealt and taken by 10%, and if you can allow yourself to throw in a few Lightning Bolts at +6 stacks you will get quite a lot of mana back. However, I would only suggest this if you got very good communication between the healers. 

Beth'tilac: I am usually upstairs so it is not because I have a lot of time not casting GHW on the tank or CH on the melee crew we got up there, I might add that Riptide is golden there and it just gets better when you get 2-set bonus. However, when we approach phase 2 and she gets down on the ground, perhaps I should add that we run with either 2 or 3 shamans on this fight and it is mainly due to players at our disposal, and we pretty much just keep Riptide in the tank and Healing Rain on CD and then we push as much damage as we can with Fire Elemental and Lightning Bolts / Flame Shock / Lava Burst in order to make the fight as short as possible and thereby less likely for us to wipe. Our first kill was with the three shamans doing between 700.000 to 950.000 damage each which might not seem like a lot, but that is 1500-2000 DPs that we each were able to dish out, and whenever you are progressing on a boss you want to keep your DPs as high as possible, and a shaman in capable of doing so with very little effort and will gain something from it (If you spec into Telluric Currents). 

Alysrazor: Telluric Currents isn't really mandatory because of the "regeneration phase" in which you will be topped off after a few casts, and mana is not really an issue unless your melee plays "HOW MANY BRUSHFIRES CAN I HIT" or "INTERUPT - WUT IS DAT ?". Nonetheless, because of the many targets Hatchling, Meteor and Druids I will strongly recommend to at least try to keep Flame Shock up in the Hatchling and possible Alysrazor whenever she flies by if you got mana for it. 

Baleroc: We are currently progressing and after a 12% wipe the first night I do think that we should be able to kill him with in a raid night, however, it is brutal. Almost constantly spamming GHW to keep people with Tormented up and the tank taking just as much damage (I love whenever our tank dodges / parries the majority of Baleroc's Decimating Blade). This might be after his nerf, however, I will say this - Two restoration shamans is NOT optimal for this encounter, and I cannot say that I have found a use for Telluric Currents here simply because the damage input is so damn high that you cannot just say "All righty guys - I am going to regn." at least not without taking a rather big risk, and penalizing your fellow healers because you had to be a little to aggressive with Healing Surge to get a few more stacks. 

Majordomo Staghelm: I have only had a few wipes on this boss, and haven't really been pass the 70% marker, but with the damage and healing debuff TC might come out quite nifty, but I will make a repost when I know what I am talking about.

Ragnaros: 2-3 Months and you will have an answer ;)

However, to summarize - I do think it is immensely important for healers to squeeze out a little damage if they got mana, and furthermore if it does not jeopardize the tank / themselves or a raid member (DIEEE DKS DIEEEEE), and if you expect a damage dealer to use defensive cool downs / spec into damage reduction talents and optimize spec / gear and gems in order to squeeze out a few more DPs - Then should they not expect you to throw up a Flame Shock, Moonfire, Insect Swarm, Devouring Plague to gain 100 DPs or more ? (Yeah, I know I "forgot" paladins, but they get raped whenever they attempt to do damage with Exorcism)

3/7 Bosses down on HC.

Hard boss is hard, but communication is apparently harder.

So we are slowly progressing through Firelands, and with Lord Rhyolith down within a jiffy of 110+ wipes and a 5 healer tactic, which was because of the fact that we do not have good damage. In fact our kill (When I say our I do mean the guilds since I wasn't present at the kill) with 5 healers was just as long as the majority of guilds who take 6 healers - Now I wonder if that is a DPS problem and what obstackles we will hit in the furture (With this DPS I assume we would only use 2 healers for Baleroc). 

So the next natural step in this fast line of progression would be Beth'tilac HC, which so far around 300 guilds have killed and that mean - We are currently around 100 ranks lower than when this expansion started, and when the goal is to jump 100 ranks up we are now looking at a jump of 200 ranks, but I guess is is beyond our reach currently. 

However, Beth ze fun spider which is a cake walk - Oh wait, it isn't when logic is a city in Mother Russia and speed is a french word. Our Beth tank did in the beginning have massive problems with getting "fast" up to Beth, and we need to him to do that because of two reasons 1) The raid is taking shit loads of damage and that stops when she is meleeing and 2) We need as much DPS on her as possible, however, to illustrate the speed of our tank: I stood next to a "line" and waited 4 seconds before I pressed it believeing that "Hey - The tank should be up now ? Oh wait I am dead due to melee ... FML (At that time the tank still hadn't been able to get up). When the tank got "the hang of it" or at least were able to get up faster the next problem arose in that region.
Our resto druid were mindblowingly slow to get up, and didn't really understand the need for her to get up ASAP after the tank (One man healing 4 melee, the tank and yourself is easy peasy ? Yesh ?).  After 25 wipes she is still the slowest and that is despite the DPS who jumps up are waiting longer and longer, but I guess that the "I MUST HEAL HERP DERP" factor is engaged. This was "just" our problems upstairs. 

Downstairs the RL had assigned three rogues to taking care of the Cinderweb Spiderlings inspite inspite of the wast majority of logs on Worldoflogs is either a) Hunters, b) Hunters + Boomkins, c)Hunters+ Frost DK or a few with d) hunters+frost dk and  rogue. Now, I am not saying that it will work for us, however, there is quite a few problems with using rogues. One is the damage which is lower than hunters, and secondly they have to stand far far out, which will require them to be single healed by one healer, who again will have to stand outside the raid (And thereby the raidhealing) during Beth's Venom Rain - Is that good ? 

Now, we do have a few people frankly "Talking out of their arshes" with ideas, and it is very cute and adorable, but it is also a bloody pain in the rectum, so when a person asked "Why aren't we using the frost DK and the hunter on the adds" Well, he wasn't exactly getting a "positive" respons  - On the contrary infact the response was pretty rough and not at all constructive.

In the end Beth'tilac got bashed to the ground, and it is perhaps the "best" fight for a restoration shaman since our mastery really shines in p2.