shaman survival

[Thranduills]

Hello I would like to address the posts that blizzard has made on the wow site. Elemental is supposed to be getting a glyph in 4.2 that allows us to cast LB on the run. They are also changing the way our dot refresh works yet not actually buffing out damage. Will this new glyph and DoT mechanic help us? or will it be a lose in most heroic fights? As well should blizzard give us a stacking DoT on the target that is affected by our LB?

For resto they are nerfing mana tide as i am sure you are aware of, from 400% to 200% they have yet to change much to our healing potency. Mana for my shaman is fine while healing raids but i can never out heal a paladin or priest, can resto be fixed by simply increasing our healing output? or should they include CD's to help the tank take less damage?

Just wondering what you all are thinking about the shaman class and the needed changes to it. :)

[Kyy]

After trying firelands on PTR I can say this:

I haven't yet been able to test how to new glyph affects our dps, but I dare to say it will put us back to same level with most casters on "normal" boss fights. AoE heavy fights will still favor other casters due to our broken aoe rotation. It's hard to promise huge come back for ele in top end raiding but it does look much better then it does on live server at least.

The healing out put of resto shamans is fine when you don't take any of the healing cool downs into count. Buffs on mastery and purification did put us on par with other healers in that. I'm still not totally happy with our only coolddown; spiritlink totem but it's better then nothing and it does have it's moments of glory (sadly it has it's bad spots as well). That being said I'm still hoping some equivalent of avenging wrath or power infusion for us.

Nerf on mana tide and the new Resurgence talent pretty much even each other out. So our personal regen should remain fairly good.

But it's hard to say anything as sure yet. Heroic modes and incoming builds might change everything I said in this post.

[Thranduills]

Yes our personal mana regen has been increased yet the nerf to mana tide will put us in a spot where it will be of rare use, some healers may not see a change with this nerf to mana tide unless they look at their buffs and see that it has been placed. Double tides will now be the same as one tide and will be less beneficial to the raid then before.

As far as resto cool downs i would love to see them give us a real CD heal. Instead of a masking heal (spirit link totem), our other cool down is only a instant cast cool down that can be casted once every 2 minutes. I believe if they gave us a buff to things such as buffing earth shield to act similar to a beacon of light, then i see where we can be more viable for progression in end game raiding.

For elemental if they took fulimination and reworked the mechanics to where it was a proc instead of a stacking buff i believe our dps would go up, but for AoE i have no idea how you could fix it. They nerf earthquake by 40% and make it casted, and just couple flame shock and fire nova together, only nerfing the damage our AoE does, not buffing it.

Yet i can't help but wonder if resto will take after the old resto for BC raiding. I compare my healing rain to other specs aoe heal and by far my healing rain heals for more per tick then any other AoE heal i have seen. We have some of the most powerful (if not the most powerful) aoe heals in the game. So I see us taking a BC kind of role. Just wondering what your thoughts are on this, if we are taking our old BC role again or are we taking on a new role.

[nikoorobin]

the elemental shaman 's aoe is 0!i think that they must do something! also the dps is very low! the other caster are better than us now! what about firelands??

[Kyy]

Yes our personal mana regen has been increased yet the nerf to mana tide will put us in a spot where it will be of rare use, some healers may not see a change with this nerf to mana tide unless they look at their buffs and see that it has been placed. Double tides will now be the same as one tide and will be less beneficial to the raid then before.

I don't think it's that bad really, if they actually succeed with all the regen nerfs and raid dmg balacing for fire lands, tide will still remain as notable tool. All thou I predict they might buff it to 300% before the patch gets out.

For elemental if they took fulimination and reworked the mechanics to where it was a proc instead of a stacking buff i believe our dps would go up

Personally I think fulmination works fine as it is, having two abilities proc'ing randomly might get bit messy. Currently you kinda know when it's safe to reset your stacks so that shock cool down gets ready to refresh flame shock.

Just wondering what your thoughts are on this, if we are taking our old BC role again or are we taking on a new role

For 25man, yes. At least I have been playing pretty much like that since first cata raids. It's not as much single button as in TBC but for me on most encounters 60-70% of healing is from healing rain/chain heal/earthliving hot. I know some people tend to favor more single target healing or focusing on tanks. But that has more to do with your healing team then actual class strengths

the elemental shaman 's aoe is 0!i think that they must do something! also the dps is very low! the other caster are better than us now! what about firelands??

Problem with ele aoe is that it needs time to set up and even if you would do "perfect" rotation which in most cases is pretty damn hard just multi dotting and using nova/cl gives nearly same result or even better.

The big issue has been that moving really does make our dps horrible, our filler spells just aren't nearly as good as lb. So that is why the new glyph should give pretty good dps gain. Also most people tend to forget that it's not only good for times when you keep moving constantly like AC or Atramedes airphase. Lots of time when you move to avoid dmg or adjust your position you need to cancel current/next lb cast, with the glyph that never happens. Also the new 4set bonus takes this even further making ele shamans able to do their full rotation on move.

To say more about the new tier bonuses, I think the 2part bonus which give you chance on offensive spells to reset fire elemental totem cd is either totally overpowered or nearly useless. I don't see them leaving fire elemental as it currently is if they end up keeping that set bonus.

ps. if some dev sees this Fire elemental totem might be most retarded mechanic in this game atm and I would love if the elemental wouldn't randomly go around and die after 15sec.

[Thranduills]

For 25man, yes. At least I have been playing pretty much like that since first cata raids. It's not as much single button as in TBC but for me on most encounters 60-70% of healing is from healing rain/chain heal/earthliving hot. I know some people tend to favor more single target healing or focusing on tanks. But that has more to do with your healing team then actual class strengths

Which role do you think we are more beneficial as a raid healer predominantly or as a single target healer? I think that with the increased mana regen in our personal area this will allow us to put out more healing rains and chain heals. This may also make it to where we can stand tank healing if the tank is less geared then you would like, or he needs a quick boost. Yet there are people asking for healing nerfs because of the seemingly invincibility that healers have in pvp. So it seems like they are gunna have to have some kinda balancing act to not make it too hard for healing raids yet not overpowered for healing in pvp. This will be the biggest trick for them. But regardless i hope that both elemental and resto get much needed buffs in respectable area's.

[Kyy]

I think resto's strength in 25man raiding at least is in raid healing. Even while our single target is strong and helping out tank healing is one part of our job I feel raid healing is still our best area of expertise. But saying things like shamans are for raid healing and paladins for tank healing is bit old fashion. Your role isn't based on your class that strictly anymore, it depends more on your healing setup and the individuals playing in it. In some guilds different setups and roles might work better then others.

Overall I think healing is pretty "big picture" in which lots of things affect to another big pile of things.

[Thranduills]

I agree with you, but nevertheless no matter what class/spec you are it would be nice to have a balanced dps/hps/survivability all the way around. I know that blizz's attempt to do this failed misserebly in the area of hybridization, as mages and hunters and locks have the best dps and versatility for raids at the moment. I would love to see us all be able to do the same damage and it not depend on if your a hybrid or not. Maybe blizz will get it right with firelands, maybe not who knows all i can say is that whatever the next patch brings i hope it makes the players shine more than the class, yet i hope that each class has its own unique ability that is very benificial in a way that in 10 mans you need ever class to down a boss. Right now my guild currently has about 2 paladins, a frost mage, frost dk, holy priest, 3 druids, destro lock, and one shaman in our 10 mans. Sometimes we swap out one character for another but this is our basic raid comp for 10 mans at the moment. I would love to see one player from each class in a 10. It is a balancing act that is hard to get, but if Trion Worlds can do it with the game "Rift" then why can't blizzard do it with WoW.

Thank-you for your time Kyylol, i will post another forum topic about shamans when the patch notes become final, asking how you think the specs will be and what you wish they should do different. Was a pleasure talking to you and talk to you in a couple weeks have fun. :)