So, in my last post I noted that my next post would be… summer anime. Anyways, the morning I was about to write the post coincidently was the same day as… the lifting of the WotLK NDA. Needless to say, instead of writing about anime I spent the entire morning reading about the various changes happening to the different aspects of WoW in the soon-to-be-released (huh?) expansion.
Note: The focous of this post is on Restoration Healing shaman for PvE. I won’t include changes and new things that are not related to the healer shaman and/or PvP related commentary.
Mechanics Changes
All items and effects which grant bonuses to spell damage and spell healing are being consolidated into a single stat, Spellpower. This stat will appear with the same values found on items which grant “increased spell damage and healing” such as on typical Mage and Warlock itemization.
All armor pieces with “+healing” on it will no longer exist and instead all armor related to casters in general will have the generic stat “Spellpower” on it. On the bright side, it means that we can have one set of gear for both elemental and resto spec (though I’m sure there are ways to gear towards one end or the other), but on the other side it means we’ll be competing for non-armor gear with every other caster (mail will be exclusive to us still, thankfully). Coupled with the implement of crit based abilities (see talents), spell crit gear intended for casters may actually be useful to us now (same with haste, but hit rating is still a big question mark for healers).
All totems are now considered on the “Physical” school, and no longer magical spells.
This just means that we can now drop totems even if silenced. We at least have something to do while we are unable to casts our heals. I’d suppose this is a big change for PvP shamans.
Totems now affect the entire raid party instead of just your immediate party members.
This is huge. No longer do raids need to stack 5 shamans like all SWP raid guilds do, and it means you will have much more freedom for raid group set-ups. Of course, totems being 20 (30 with talents) yards, you’ll still need multiple shamans to cover the raid.
New Abilities
Earthliving Weapon – Imbue the Shaman’s weapon with earthen life. Increases healing done by 26 and each heal has a 20% chance to proc Earthliving on the target, healing an additional 360 over 12 sec. Lasts 30 minutes.
It makes us unable to use mana oil, but I’m sure this benefit outweights the mp5 we get from the oil. A minor healing increase, but a 20% to proc a HoT on the target. Depending on it’s co-efficient and it’s internal cooldown (chain heal spam), it can be either helpful or godly. We’ll have to look and see.
Hex – Transforms the enemy into a frog. While hexed, the target cannot attack or cast spells. Damage caused may interrupt the effect. Lasts 30 sec. Only one target can be hexed at a time. Only works on Humanoids and Beasts. (1.5 sec cast, 20 yd range, 45 sec cooldown)
I think all shamans are dancing on tables now that after 4 years of wow (well, 1 or maybe two for draenei) we have a form of CC that doesn’t involve frost shock. It’s not recastable and reliable as sheep is, and the hexed target can still move around freely (pvp implications more, though I’d like to see how the AI reacts to this ability), but nonetheless it is a solid CC. Note that damage “may” interrupt the effect, meaning that it isn’t easily breakable like sheep. I doubt it’ll last long if you wail on it though. This ability will mean that enhance and elemental shamans are much more welcome in 5 mans. 20 yard range is sad but oh well, I guess we can’t ask for too much.
Changed Abilities
Wrath of Air is now a flat 10% spell haste totem.
Much welcome change, especially seeing how every single shaman heal has a cast time 10% haste will raise our healing abilities by a high amount.
Flametongue Totem is now a flat spell damage totem.
We’ll be dropping this instead of searing now, since elemental shamans still need to drop totem of wrath. I’m sure there’ll be encounters where searing totems are useful, so we’ll still need to switch around depending on the situation.
Grace of Air Totem has been removed.
Strength of Earth Totem now also increases agility.
Now that the two stat totems have combined and is only an earth totem, we’ll be dropping this to buff hunters and perhaps even melee because stoneskin has been changed to:
Stoneskin Totem now increases armor instead of reducing physical damage.
Someone will need to drop this for the tank(s) now. Yay for removing useless totems, speaking of which:
Windwall Totem has been removed.
I loled.
New Talents
Improved Water Shield (Restoration, 3/3) – When you gain a critical effect from your Healing Wave or Lesser Healing Wave spells, you have a 100% chance to instantly consume a Water Shield Orb.
Wow. Everytime you crit with your single-target heals you eat a water shield charge. On paper it sounds really nice, however, there are no talents to increase the number of charges on the shield itself, and ending up with a high crit rate may make you find yourself having to refreshing water shield a bit too often. Since keeping water shield does give us a good 50mp5, I’m not sure if this talent is really worth the points, also seeing how many crit-based talents are introduced (see below). Of course, in the expantion we may have GCDs free to refresh watershield every 10 seconds, but I doubt it (remember other effects will eat up your shield as well).
Cleanse Spirit (Restoration, 1/1) – Cleanse the spirit of a friendly target, removing 1 poison effect, 1 disease effect, and 1 curse effect. (Instant cast, 40 yd range)
Shamans have now possibly the largest arsenal of effect dispelling amongst all classes now. We still lack a defensive dispel for magic effects, so we’ll still need pallies or priests to cover our asses.
Blessing of the Eternals (Restoration, 2/2) – Increases the critical effect chance of your spells by 4%, and increases the bonus healing from your Earthliving weapon by 10%.
Minor boost to healing crit, and minor boost to healing via earthliving weapon. Seeing talents such as improved water shield, ancestral awakening (below), and the maybe the new elemtnal focus (further below), we’ll be needing more spell crit, and therefore 4% for 2 talent points is the best bargain you’ll find anywhere.
Improved Earth Shield (Restoration, 2/2) – Increases the amount of charges for your Earth Shield by 2, and increases the healing done by your Earth Shield by 10%.
More time before you have to refresh the shield, and it heals more too! Yes please.
Ancestral Awakening (Restoration, 3/3) – When you critically heal with your Healing Wave or Lesser Healing Wave, you summon an Ancestral spirit to aid you, instantly healing the lowest health friendly party or raid target within 40 yards for 60% of the amount healed.
Game changing talent #1: This reason alone is enough to start stacking spell crit. It turns every single target heal you cast that crits into a mini-chain heal. If I read the wording correctly it’s 60% of the crit-modified value, that means the secondary target will be almost getting the full effect of the spell. Also note that the “jump” is 40 yards and selects target “smartly”. It will either ease raid healing whilst we are tank healing, or it will allow us to raid heal effectively if even if the raid is spread out (depending on how much spell crit we can attain reasonably), although relying on the RNG for raid healing probably isn’t the best idea ever…
I also wonder what happens if the rest of the raid is at 100%, does it heal the original target for a total amount of 240% (including the original heal)?
Tidal Waves (Restoration, 5/5) – You have a 100% chance after you cast Chain Heal to lower the cast time of your next two Lesser Healing Wave or Healing Wave spells by 30%, and your Healing Wave and Lesser Healing Wave spells gain an additional 25% of your bonus healing effects.
Game changing talent #2: I really dont’ know what to say about this ability, solely because I can’t imagine how I would heal with this talent. This combined with ancestral awakening, a healthy amount of spell crit will mean that we can raid heal with insane efficiency. All lesser healing waves cast after a chain heal (with the new wrath of air totem) will be 1.5*0.7/1.1=0.954s and all healing waves will be 2.5*0.7/1.1=1.59, even faster if you have spell haste. The calculations may differ depending on how “reduces cast time by 30%” is calculated (*0.7 or /1.3) but seeing how “reduces cast time by 100%” makes spell instant, I will assume the former as correct for now.
How this’ll affect our healing: I don’t know how shamans will incorporate this into their healing process, but I see that we’ll still be spamming chain heal where necessary, and using these ultra-quick heals to top people off when chain heal isn’t catching up. It makes for a hell of a gearing experience though, as chain-heal critting does nothing but the single target gains substantial benefits from spell crit. Will need some actual healing experience to see this.
Spirit Link (restoration, 1/1) – You link the friendly target with up to two nearby friendly targets, causing 50% of any damage taken to be distributed to the linked targets. If any target takes a blow greater than 30% of their health, or shared damage would reduce a target’s health below 20%, the link is broken. You can only have one link active at a time. (Instant cast, 12% of base mana, 40 yd range)
Game changing talent #3: or not. Restoration’s 51 talent. Depending on how hard bosses hit for, it will either make restoration shamans absolutely necessary for boss fights, or make this ability mostly useless. It makes chain heal viable for tank healing. It will reduce tank damage by a ton, but it will at the same time mess with rage/mana generation for bear/warrior/pally tanks and therefore screw their threat generation. On the otherhand if you can somehow link this to a fury warrior, and the linked damage generates threat, wow. Or maybe you can reverse and link this from the fury warrior to your MT to help with threat generation: who knows? We’ll also have to see how the links are established and mantained before we can form up creative ways to utilize this ability. On the other hand, I can see how this ability is useful in PvP.
Changed Talents
Enhancing Totems (Enhancement, 3/3) – Increases the effect of your Strength of Earth and Flametongue Totems by 15%.
Now that totems are raid-wide, and you have a use for flametongue now, as well as strength of earth being a totem that you’d have chances of dropping, this will be a filler talent to consider, in competition with:
Ancestral Knowledge (Enhancement, 5/5) – Increases your intellect by 10%.
This will now grant you more healing (via Int>healing talent) and spell crit (via int). It’s still pretty filler, depending if you want the next talent or not:
Improved Elemental Shields (Enhancement, 3/3) – Increases the damage done by your Lightning Shield orbs by 15%, increases the amount of mana gained from your Water Shield orbs by 15% and increases the amount of healing done by your Earth Shield orbs by 15%.
Restoration gains 2/3 effects at the same time compared to other specs which only can gain 1 of the 2 (earth shield does nothing) effects. Not only will you be gaining extra mana via water shield (and with improved water shield especially), your earth shield will heal for an additional 15% (multiplicative with improved earth shield).
Elemental Focus (Elemental, 1/1) – After landing a critical strike with a Fire, Frost, or Nature damage spell, you enter a Clearcasting state. The Clearcasting state reduces the mana cost of your next 2 damage or healing spells by 40%.
Now, from the description above, it doesn’t trigger off healing spells, but will affect healing spells. I’ve read elsewhere that it will trigger off healing spells in the future, making it the Shaman’s version of Illumination (for 1 talent point too). On the down side, you have to invest in 10 filler talents to get to this (aside from elemental warding being quite useful), and with the bottom-heavy restoration tree and the limited number of talent points, I’m not sure we can afford to go this far down the elemental tree (though this talent with all the crit talents has great synergy). Depending on how much mana we are going to require in the expansion, this may be a hit-or-miss talent for restoration shamans.
Conclusion
From the limited information we have at the moment, I’d say that healing as a restoration shaman may change drastically as the expansion approaches. For one, we’ll be having much more tough talent choices come expansion than the no brainer talent specs we have at the moment. My playing with talent calculators suggest that we’ll need to say goodbye to Nature’s Guardian, and even Healing way and Healing Grace. Healing wave from my experience does not make a large enough impact when we’re mostly raid healing to make a difference, to synergise with our healing style, I’d say it needs to proc off chain heal (but still effect only Healing Wave, if you see what I’m getting at).
Upon deeper thought, it seems that Blizzard is forcing restoration shamans to choose one “spec”: raid healing via improved chain heal talents, mp5 and straight healing based gearset, or tank healing via healing wave/lesser healing wave based talents and crit based gearset (basically a Paladin in mail). But given the stationary nature of Shaman healing, I doubt that shamans will be ideal tank healers in the end (say, compared to, *cough*druids*cough*).
Example specs: (The blizzard beta-calcs are out of date)
To be honest I find that there’s probably going to be an optimal spec for healing in raids, depending on how the majority of raids are set up in the expansion. (I’d say the elemental sub-spec version is close to something that I’d be using if I were to be making a choice right now)
At this point in time, we’re still speculating on how things will work and many of these talents and abilities may be tweaked as we get closer to launch (and even after launch). It’s going to be an exciting expansion for shamans.
