Pandas !

Pandas !

I haven't written anything for a while which is mainly due to my old keyboard died, and that there really haven't been much to debate.

I highly doubt that there will be a lot of adjustments on any class before the release in two weeks time, and if there is some changes I guess it will be minor tweaks or tooltip clarifications.

So, how is the shamans holding up ?

Shamans are currently in a decent position (if we look much more than a month back the answer would have been very different) and I do honestly doubt that we will be benched on any of the current encounters, all though I cannot speak for 10man since the hard mode testing was before any of the "tweaks" were put in place hence my experiences from it will be more or less worthless.

For 25man I would say that we are looking very strong, and possible one of the strongest healers for some of the fights, and no that wasn't a typo.
The major reason is the abilities that we have been granted and how they work, let us look at Ascendance which duplicates your healing (except for totems) which is quite good.
Ascendance does also have the "benefit" from also being somewhat decent while being on the run aside Spiritwalker's Grace you can blanket your raid with Riptides while moving assuming your raid is low and still do a fair amount of healing. Or in more stationary environments you toss out HR and spam CH while you see the raid HP moves rapidly to a 100%.
Healing Tide Totem is very, very good and is one of the throughput CDs that we have been wishing for.

Furthermore, if we look at our new talents we can choose to get even more cooldowns such as Elemental Mastery - 30% haste for 20 sec on a 2 min cooldown. It will have its uses on some encounters over Ancestral Swiftness.
However, if we pick Primal Elementalist we are granted 2 additional cooldowns: Fire Elemental: 5% dmg increase and 10% healing,  and Earth Elemental: 20% dmg reduction and 10% healing, however, since the elementals have to channel it to you they aren't doing any damage so you trade the damage from increased healing, and you can always stop the channel and let the elementals go back to do damage whenever you do not need the increased healing.

I will personally go with a spec something along these lines for the majority of encounters:

Glyphs: I have not made up my mind a 100% yet, but I am fairly sure that for 90% of the time I will stick to Telluric Currents and Riptide with Water Shield / Fire Elemental Totem or Healing Wave for personal healing. It will depend on the encounter, but they are all situational.

As for stats then there is no doubt about spirit will be very valuable, but do not forget the importance of int.

As for the secondary stats haste, crit and mastery.
Haste is a strong stat, but outside the breakpoints of Riptide, Healing Stream, Healing Rain and Healing Tide Totem there is hardly much to gain from it (http://www.totemspot.com/vb/entry.php?b=41 ) can you see the result.

So crit vs. mastery what to choose ?
There is a couple of ways to answer this one being "What is your setup?" and by that I mean if you play with 2 x disc in your raid grp. then the value of mastery will be a lot lower than e.g playing with 2 other shamans. Then there is the question of the encounter in general as is it moderate and steady damage or is it low damage with the occasional burst? In the first scenario I will value crit higher due to mastery will most likely not be reaching that much of an effect whereas the second scenario will have a use for mastery to heal people back to full as fast as possible.

However, personally I will be going for crit in the beginning and it is mainly due to the difference between crit and mastery is not that massive (Okay, if a person is on 2% hp then it is, but when are you ever gemming / gearing for that scenario?) so on average for the majority of fights (some will require different setups :O ) crit will come out on top, and furthermore it will grant you more mana back from Ressurgence which is something that I always enjoy during progress since mana is always an issue. 

I must admit that I am really looking forward to raiding in MoP, and with the latest adjustments to shamans I am very much looking forward to try MoP healing. 

Happy leveling ! 

Issues with resto shamans on the beta v.2

I've barely finished my next whine post, and BAM changes to shamans on the Beta.

Shaman (Forums)

• Chain Heal healing increased by 15%.
• Healing Rain healing increased by 40%.
• Healing Surge now costs 34.3% of Base Mana, up from 31.6%.

Restoration

• Greater Healing Wave now costs 26.9% of Base Mana, down from 31.6% of Base Mana.

However, I am going to post it anyway, and it is "only" the CH part which is somewhat outdated:

Jim'll fix it; or what is the current solution ? 

I think one of the main reasons for there being a major balancing issue is the introduction of the new fixed mana pools, and I do generally like the idea on paper, but I sincerely think that it will provide Blizzard with a balancing nightmare.

How come ? Well, with abilities like Divine Plea, Innervate, Telluric Currents, PW: Solace (I haven't really read up on priests so I might be wrong) restores a percentage of your mana, then they will unquestionable be really rather nice in the beginning of the expansion since mana always is an issue.

However, since they are fixed on mana pools they will not scale with an increase in our gear, and this does invariable also lead to them becoming less and less worthwhile (TC is my primary focus since I play a shaman, Plea and Innervate might not be affected in the same way). Since our regn. will be relatively low in the beginning the 2% (or 0,58% as it really is) gain is something that we cannot ignore and that we will be forced to try and get as much benefit from as possible. Though, when our spirit goes up so does our regn., and with e.g. higher levels of crit percentage (We won't reach Cata levels, but let us say 20ish%) a spell like HW will become close to mana neutral or even a mana gain with your passive regn.. Then TC will become less and less desirable since the only thing it does scale with is haste, and we won't reach levels of haste where "hard casting" TC will be manageable nor even worthwhile (Make the shaman spec elemental and gain 8-14 times the damage and still get HTT for the oh shit situation).

One of the reasons that TC became mandatory for Cataclysm around the time of Firelands was the scaling of it or so to speak how few of our stats that didn't affect it. As TC was based on our LB damage, spl. it affected the return (And with bosses / adds taking extra damage it could be a massive gain), crit is pretty self-explanatory, spirit if you were specced into Elemental Precision and haste which grants the possibility of more casts during the same timeframe.

So as our gear improved so did the talent, but it is completely  the other way around with Mist since TC only scales with haste it will become less and less desirable or useful.

I think that the "best" way to fix one of the current massive issues with shaman regn. without affecting PVP too much (I know absolutely NOTHING about PVP and I am not planning to either), but I do suspect that one of the reasons for not "just" buffing WS or reducing spell costs is directly linked with shamans then becoming too powerful in a PVP environment. Therefore the best approach is to revert the changes to TC so it grants x% of damage done, which also adds an extra  dimension to certain fights for a shaman:

- Can you sacrifice 2-5 casts on LBs in order to gain mana since the boss is taking extra damage or are you forced to go bonkers with your healing abilities?

- Grants a more interesting choice between Ancestral Swiftness and Elemental Mastery

- Adds a more personal choice for secondary stats - passive regn. vs. e.g. crit for Resurgence and a possible higher gain from TC.

This may also reflect the fact that I really did enjoy the more aggressive playstyle that TC gave you the capability to play. 

In addition to the mana issue, and while our hands are still warm from clapping our fat hands together in joy over recent buffs, then we are still miles behind every other class (Perhaps except a disc priest, but since they add a massive amount of damage to the raid I hardly see them as "worse" than shamans). Spreading fights - We are obliterated beside the 15 seconds we got Ascendance up, and when it is on CD we are either a) Throwing Riptides around like it was our only spell, b) Hoping that the miserable CH will manage to jump more than twice or c) Meh, monks got it anyway no worries.

Fights where we gather - We are doing somewhat fine, and can push somewhat decent numbers, but still we are surpassed by a large margin by monks (Okay, they are surpassing everyone by miles). However, it brings up an issue which have been discussed and talked about quite often and that is; If we aren't "good" at anything, why bring a shaman when a paladin / druid / monk will do the job better in a spread environment, and do it just as well in a stacked ? I can see the idea of no more niche healers from a designer point of view, but of you do not excel at anything then you must be average all-around, but that is not the case. The case currently is that you will gimp your raid by bringing a shaman to the vast majority of fights HR, CH buffs or no HR, CH buffs. 

Talking about Chain Heal.

It has been the signature spell for resto shamans for ages, but current it is the thing that causes us to struggle and be so far behind that it isn't even funny anymore. There is two major reasons for CHs inadequateness:

1st) Something that the majority of resto shamans have pointed out again, again and again. Jump range, Jump range and how often you end up with 2 perhaps 3 jumps not really feeling the time spend on the cast, and the mana you have invested in CH was worth it.

2nd) In a 10man grp. you would rarely find 4 people within the desired jump range, but then you can always glyph CH and bam no more worries. Or to be brutal honest, the only place used CH during 10man testing was primarily whenever there was massive inc. raid damage, and one cast with extra jump range and 4 sec CD is just not worth it. Your spell might be more efficient, but you can get close to two extra CH casts in during its downtime.
In 25man CH should hold its ground, but from my point of view it is still inadequate. Jump range is still an issue unless you only focus on melee, which in any case should have HR placed on them. The glyph is an even bigger no go in this environment, and I do honestly feel like CH is one of the worst "primary" heals in spite of it being "smart".  I do think compared to the other healers raid healing abilities our CH is the  (under the best conditions) least well-functioning. If we look at the percentages of the raid that it manages to heal for a cast compared to priest / druid abilities  

CH (2,5s) heals 4 = 16% (If it manages to jump)

PoH (2,5s ) / WG (8 sec CD) / CoH  (10 sec CD, glyph and Chakra not included)  5 = 20%

Now, I know we also have paladins and monks, but since monks are retarded and I do not have enough knowledge about paladins I will refrain from looking at them.

So CH takes just as long as a PoH to cast, but heals one person less. It is a smart heal, but it also heals less and less effective each jump. PoH is grp. based and if people place themselves left and right then it has just the same issue as CH, however, when stacked it has none of the drawbacks (Talking about the numbers it produces vs. CH is another talk).

So CH is clearly the weakest "primary" AoE heal considering the percentage of the raid it has the capability of healing, and it has a relative long cast time compared to the amount of healing you get from it.

My point is that under the current circumstances and compared to the other healers it screams to high heavens for a change. I see two possible "fixes":

1) Increase jump range plus removing the reduced effectiveness after each jump. That should make the spell more desirable to use, and by becoming more powerful it somewhat counters that it only hits 4 people.

2) Increase jump range plus adjusting the glyph to hitting one person more, with the a downside somewhat like our current Cata glyph.

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). 

 

Thoughts on restoration shaman on beta.

Thought on restoration shaman on beta. 

I forced myself to level to 90 and dinged just shortly before the first raid bosses were tested, and I have not been on every of them yet. However, in spite of EU problems with a) Getting / Staying online, b) Getting / staying in the instance and c) Getting the boss to spawn I think it is time to sit down and think a little about "how" restoration shaman feels (and which is likely what it will feel like). 

What do I like?
In the beginning I disliked the less talents to pick system, however, I can see that it is "smarter" or whatever you would like to call it, and allow me to explain why: In Cata you usually went with a 3/5/33 spec where you had very little choice so to speak regarding talents if you wanted a raiding spot, and as the gear became better you were forced into using Telluric Currents (A play style which I generally like), but with the changes there is more "choice". 

Do you want a 40% CD reduction (Astral Swiftness) or a nice absorbing totem (Stone Bulwark Totem)?
Do you want your own mini heroism (Elemental Mastery) because you were getting too used for Spiritwalker's Grace and the 4-set  or 5% passive haste(Ancestral Swiftness) or a chance to duplicate your spell (Echo of the Elements)? All of them are good and usable, however, there will always be a best or most optimal way of speccing / gearing for a specific encounter, and no matter how many or little talents you have there will always be x is better than y. 

Another thing I like is the fixed mana at 300.000 or I like it as an idea because in practice there is some obvious flaws e.g. monks with mana and chi (And being ridicules overpowered atm. hello renewing mist and uplift) and then the way mana regeneration works. I haven't played my priest or attempted to level a monk, so I can only speak for a shaman, but currently I got these concerns:

A) Resurgence: Due to our very, very low amount of crit it does seem to be close to useless. e.g. I've looked at the log for a couple of bosses on Beta, and on fights varying at 3-5 mins of length (I am well-aware that it does also highly depend on the spell usage, however let us ignore that atm.) and I am gaining between 14.000-30.000 mana and that is enough mana for 1 Greater Healing Wave plus one Healing Wave. That is not much more than I would get from a Potion of Concentration so I think it either needs a rework or upping the amount of mana that you gain from it. 

B) Telluric Currents is a spell I've enjoyed, and I think that the glyph is mandatory due to the restrain on mana there usually is during the beginning for an expansion, however, I do have one major issue with it and that is that it regenerates 2% of your base mana which is 6000 with the fixed mana pools, and I am okay with that it removes the issue of it becoming ridicules overpowered on fights where bosses take extra damage, and that is okay. What I am not so keen on is that it also costs 4260 so for a 2,5 sec cast you gain 1740 mana which does seem nice (along with the additional regeneration from Water Shield and your spirit) but it is still not a lot when you consider the mana pool of 300.000 or to put it in percentage: 0,58% of your total mana is what you gain from casting a Lightning Bolt and I will argue that it is too low. I got two solutions a) Make the Glyph reduce (Remove would make it a too powerful regn. tool) so that it grants 1%-2% of base mana just like the priests new and hip version Power Word: Solace which in addition also has a shorter cast time. 

C) Mana Tide Totem: I don't mind to be a "buff bitch", however, I would really enjoy the ability more if it in addition to granting my fellow party members 200% of my spirit (hello spirit stacking shaman) that it would grant the shaman an additional buff / uniqueness so that you weren't forced to monitor your fellow healers mana and use it whenever they were down on mana, but instead also could use it for your own "gain" e.g. giving it a 5% increased healing / 300% regn. to yourself or something along those lines. 

Healing arsenal and what we got to play with: 

There isn't a giant change in the healing department beside we get another cooldown totem (Healing Tide Totem will be obligatory for resto) and a quite nifty cooldown (Ascendance) and the option to go bonkers with Mana Tide wait for it to run out, and then use Healing Tide Totem plus Ascendance and if we are stacking Spirit Link Totem as well, and the after the 10 seconds if the raid still is dangerous low you got the option to use "Call of the Elements" and before you can say "I would like a lager, please" you can use Healing Tide and Spirit Link again that is some quite serious burst healing. So whenever it comes to stacking fights, as we still got Healing Rain, we do look quite powerful in the area of stack healing and massive burst, however, you will need a crazy amount of regn. to keep up Healing Rain with its current cost of 32.340 mana (I was struggling with my mana even with the buff to raid gear for testing).

It does then look like we are pretty much as we used to be - great at stack aoe healing but quite worthless for whenever we need to spread, but no ! Or we are better off than we have ever been before with the new "Glyph of Riptide" which basically makes it into a shaman version of Rejuvenation just like a few attempts on Blade Lord Ta'yak shows:

This is from an attempt where I tried to see if "Echo of the Elements" was worth taking, and atm. it does seem to have a too low proc chance in order to make it useful compared to a flat out 5% haste that you get from "Ancestral Swiftness".  (And sorry for it looking like crap on the layout)

All in all I do look forward to the expansion, and I think that some of the issues I have been talking about will be addressed or I at least very much hope so.

Thoughts on Diablo 3

Diablo 3.

As so many other people playing World of Warcraft I signed up for the annual pass in order to get beta invite and Diablo 3 for "free". I had previously played both Diablo and Diablo 2 plus Lord of Destruction and thought "This should be entertaining" , oh boy was I wrong.

The game is broken, unfinished and so unbalanced that it is unbearable - allow me to explain:

The launch along with the two weeks after was riddled with "Error 37" "Error 3003" plus a substantial amount of less common errors.  It was so frustrating not being able to login whenever you wanted, however, from a pure business point of view I do understand Blizzard since why bother to buy extra servers since it will only be needed for the first 2-3 weeks and then there is no use for it, I can understand that. But from a customer perspective - WHAT THE FUCKING HELL. 

Then there is the "balancing" of classes / mechanics which the first week was changed so often that when you logged in the next day your spec could be completely worthless due to some mechanics could be "exploited" (The first Diablo kill comes to mind along with a party of 4 monks), which honestly isn't more than a lack of testing. I rolled a wizard and just at the top of my head I can think of "Force Armor", any spec with Critical mass (Unless you roll with a ridicules amount of crit) and to that you can add spells or abilities which is downright useless such as "Meteor", "Energy Twister" Storm/Ice Armor", "Explosive Blast". However, I got nothing to complain about compared to Monks and Barbarians and how they got obliterated due to the brilliant idea to scale mob / boss damage output in a ridicules way, however, this is getting "reversed" which is nothing more than a "fast fix" since if there isn't additional "abilities" while you get more buffs + crowd control then playing in a group will make everything easier, and it does quite a bit.

However, as of current while I am farming gear (Love getting level 50 items of Azmodan) which never get any sort of useful stats e.g. intellect and dexterity on barbarians only belts I mean - Come on, I get the randomized stats but some of it is downright retarded. Speaking of retarded mob abilities some are more or less impossible with certain mob combinations - Invulnerable on any mobs which is average speed and got fast is impossible for me as a wizard. Soul Lashers is something I skip or attempt to bug since they are way to powerful in regards to speed and power while not even being elites and when they get more buffs - meh, bad design. Phasebeasts with firechains - Brilliant put Fire Chains on a mob which got teleport as standard that is fucking ingenious...

In summary I am quite disappointed with the game and if it wasn't for the Annual Pass I would be downright furious about spending 40 euroes on it. It is nothing more than a Beta game that is half broken and untested, which if you play on Inferno is so obvious that it makes you wonder who the hell the beta testers are ? I was thrilled with the "Our beta testers thought it was hard, and then we doubled the damage / HP" and I thought "Yay, this will be difficult". Difficult is not being oneshot from outside your area of view, being unable to take certain elite mobs due to their affixes (I don't mind skipping but some combinations is so painstakingly obvious impossible to kill for any class) and it just adds to the notion that the game is not thoroughly done and the doubling was just a "fast" adjustment since balancing the game would take too much time. 

I know that Diablo is a farming game, but getting level 50 loot from Act3-4 Inferno bosses is not fun nor is it well-thought through. If I were to rank the game I would give it 1/6 simply because of the amount of problems, broken abilities and general brain farts which sadly is the notion that the game gives me. Or worthless stats such as +Experience on level 60 items.

And don't give me "Patches will fix it" - Yes, but I don't expect to start a game and then wait a month or two till the fucktards who designed got enough data from the people playing and complaining so that they can balance the game because the nitwits were incapable of doing so.

The most positive thing I can say that despite WoW and Diablo 3 is two different genres it does make me appreciate how well-balanced and well-functioning that WoW is compared to the Beta game Diablo 3.  

Revised restoration shaman guide as of 4.3.3

Revised restoration shaman guide as of 4.3.3

After the nerfs to Dragon Soul and the amount of gear which people have access to currently I’ve come to the conclusion that I should update / revise my guide, since it is somewhat “not up to date” – So here goes.

Now, I am going to make some assumptions 1) You got 4-set, 2) Your ilvl is somewhere around 390+ and you are currently progressing between Hagara HM to Spine HM.

If you have read my first 4.3 guide you will notice a lot of similarities, however, it is mainly due to the “basics” is more or less the same.

Talents:

The "cookie cutter" spec for the vast majority of bosses http://www.wowhead.com/talent#hhZbhZfGbMsbcRsd without Improved Cleanse Spirit and the reason for that is the only bosses where the talent is needed is to some extend on Warlord Zon'ozz, Hagara the Stormbinder and Spine of Deathwing. Furthermore, in a 25man environment you should talk to your fellow healers about who loses the least on the encounter by grabbing dispel. However, shamans is usually a strong choice for dispelling since we "mainly" choose to go 1/2 Ancestral Resolve in order to grab Improved Cleanse Spirit, but we still lose 5% damage reduction while casting.  

If you are using Ancestral Swiftness find the nearest trainer and respec.

Glyphs:

Prime:  I've been running with "Glyph of Earthliving Weapon", "Glyph of Riptide" and "Glyph of Water Shield" with a chunk of the community going for "Glyph of Earth Shield" instead of "Glyph of Water Shield", but my logic tells me that "Glyph of Water Shield" is overall a better choice and let me elaborate on that: Earth Shield does little overhealing and glyphing it increases its efficiency with is a direct "Healing pr. mana" increase, however, it is an increase on one target plus you will usually have a druid running with "Lifebloom" in him along with a beacon so it does increase your healing ever so slightly, but it just adds more overhealing to your fellow healers. Now, "Glyph of Water Shield" grants me an extra 177mp5 in combat and that does not seem like a massive increase in fact it is 2124 extra mana pr. min.. Nonetheless, since the average fight lasts 5-12minutes it is an additional gain of anywhere from 10kish to 25kish extra mana pr. fight, which on progression fights where your mana is limited can be the GHW or Healing Rain which keeps the tank or a couple of raid members alive the last 5 seconds and making it a kill. What I am trying to say is that "Glyph of Earth Shield" is an increase on one target whereas "Glyph of Water Shield" grants the mana to toss out a heal on the entire raid, and thereby in my eyes being a better choice in terms of mana (Maybe except on "Yor'Sahj the Unsleeping" due to the mechanics of the fight). 

Major: 

There isn't much to discuss about these glyphs go with "Glyph of Stoneclaw Totem" since you will get a minor cooldown for yourself which can be quite beneficial and might save your ass. "Glyph of Chain Heal" if you are doing 25man then it is a must have, and finally "Glyph of Healing Stream Totem". Some might argue "But what about Glyph of Healing Wave?" in short - It is worthless, it might be mana neutral, but check your logs and see how many times you have been casting Healing Wave during the encounter and if it is more than 10 you are doing it wrong and this is why:  It heals for 10-11000 depending on gear, and crits for 21-23000 along with the "Ancestral Awakening" with adds 6-8000, but in the vast majority of cases you will be better of casting a GHW which is 30-35000 hits and 65-80.000 crits, and with our current health pools a Greater Healing Wave will most likely be the best choice in 98,54% of the time if you talk single target heals (Unless you are completely  out of mana) and beside that GHW costs around 3,5 times more mana than a HW it is the way to go. If you consider healing a person from 90-95% HP to full, and the person isn't a tank and it is a low damage phase, just stop and let the passive healing like Healing Rain, Earthliving, Wild Growth, Circle of Healing, Healing Stream do the job and spend your time casting a Lightning Bolt instead.

Stats:

Intellect is king as always since it increases your mana pool, spell power and is making your heals more potent.

Spirit, in Dragon Soul spirit has been my main secondary stat due to I am always in need of more mana since heavy use of GHW, Healing Rain has been required, but also because it also makes your "Mana Tide Totem" give more mana to you, but also to your fellow healers, which always is nice. The "rule of thumb" for spirit is "Did you have mana left the first time you killed the boss? If no when were you oom? At 2, 5 or 10% ? How much overhealing did you do and could you have weaved in a few more Lightning Bolts? If the answers is: No, 10% and no then you need more spirit or using your heals differently, but if you had mana left and it was above 5% then how many people died which you could have saved and how much healing did you do compared to the other healers? About equal, a little behind or several thousand HPs behind? Because there is a lot of factors varying in. As in general you want as much spirit as possible maybe except for a few encounters.
Added:
People who advocate reforging all your spirit to something else - ignore them, spirit is still a good stat and your fellow healers will also love you for Tide. However, pushing +4000 spirit is overkill, and when you grab a hold of "Heart of the Unliving" you should perhaps consider reforging some of your spirit to e.g. crit. Nonetheless, there is no  "rule of thumb" when it comes to reforging as resto shaman - it is all about playstyle, spell selection, healing combination and the boss.

Edited secondary stats - mastery, haste and crit:
Crit was in my previous guide labeled as "too random", however, with the amount of gear which people should have at this point, which leads to the increased throughput by every healer on your team, decreased tank damage due to gear (There is still mechanics which makes mastery go "boooja") I've more or less drawn the conclusion that crit is your new best buddy.
Now, let me explain: For Ultraxion, Warmaster Blackhorn, Spine of Deathwing and Madness of Deathwing your top healing spells should be Healing Rain, Earthliving, Chain Heal, Riptide and Greater Healing Wave (random order). While mastery boots all of these heals, when the HP pool gets lowered it will "less lower" now due to nerfs, more gear on discipline priests, holy paladins which generates more absorbs, which means that the raid takes less damage. Furthermore, with better gear your HP will increase and thereby the incoming damage will reduce your HP pool by a less percentage than previously. You might say "But this is so such a tiny amount, mastery is still king!" - Sure, mastery is still good and a lifesaver, however, the value of it is slightly lower than it was previously.
Now, haste is from my point of view still a suboptimal way since it only grants a benefit to HW, HS, GHW and CH and with Tidal Waves the increase is hardly noticeable, which means that outside the breakpoints of Riptide, Healing Rain and Earthliving I wouldn't encourage people to aim for haste.
This leaves me with suggesting to go with crit after you have reached 1268 (1130 goblin) haste, in order to reach 50% haste during Heroism/Timewarp/Bloodlust and your  4-set, because it will grant a increase to all your spells, and yes - in some situations it will be downright overhealing, however, when people aren't getting smashed below 65ish% they do not receive the full benefit from mastery, whereas they will gain the full benefit of crit (unless it is a GHW, but then again this will create more Ancestral Awakening procs), and it will increase your mana regn. ever so slightly from "Resurgence".  

TLDR:
In short: Int > spirit (read the Added part) > haste(1268 (1130) with 4-set bonus) > crit > mastery > haste.

Numbers:

If you are stepping into heroic Dragon Soul I would highly suggest that you aim for 916 haste in order to get an extra tick on earthliving  (780 for goblins) and then go for as much sprit and mastery as possible. However, when you get your 4th piece of t13 I would suggest for at least Ultraxion, Spine of Deathwing and Madness of Deathwing that you adjusts your haste.

Breakpoints:

 Healing Rain                          Earthliving                                           Glyphed Riptide:

 % you get an extra tick    % you get an extra tick                  % you get an extra tick   

    10%                                       12,5%                                                         

    30%                                       37,5%                                                          

    50%                                       62,5%                                                50%

                                                                          (Only breakpoint which matters here,

                                                                       since you already got the first covered)

The percentages is unbuffed, but since Heroism / Bloodlust grants you 30% haste and so does "Spiritwalker's Grace" with 4-set you will see around a 20-25% uptime of a given fight, if you use your CD wise, which makes me suggest that when you get t13 4-piece you jump up to 1268 haste (1131 for goblins, leaves me at 50,04% with Bloodlust) (I might be slightly inaccurate by a few rating, but you can test it yourself - If you reach 50% haste with +5% haste from totem and either Heroism / Bloodlust / 4-set bonus running you got it) which means that when you are under the influence of Lust/Hero/Time and 4-piece bonus your Healing Rain and your Riptide will get more ticks, and thereby be "free" extra healing, whenever you need to increase the amount of HPs due to heavy damage phases.

I've added some of the kills which I have frapsed: 

Ultraxion:                   

   

 Spine of Deathwing: 

 

Madness of Deathwing: In which I play like garbage.

//Any spelling mistakes and horrendous grammar violations is free.