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Mazukon

Concerned about Resto Shamans in BRF

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I have been playing Resto Shaman for a few raid tiers now, but am strongly considering playing another spec or class for BRF. My guild runs a 20 man heroic/mythic team with 4 healers, a disc priest, holy pally, resto druid, and resto shaman. I think I would benefit my raid team much better as a MW monk. I have a few concerns.

 

1. Many of the BRF fights involve constant spreading and lots of movement. Only p1 Oregorger, Gruul, Blast Furnace, and maybe parts of Blackhand are people stacked and taking damage. Every other fight involves the raid constantly spread which severly hurts our AOE throughput.

 

2. Our throughput is just too low. Outside of healing tide/ascendance, I feel completely useless and even then, they heal for less than a tranquility or revival. The rankings on Warcraft logs supports this, since on most fights, there are about 10 resto shamans in the top 200 healers. Even holy priests are outperforming resto shamans on many fights.

 

3. Terrible itemization for BRF. We have a weapon and shield with Haste/mastery, and the tier legs (which go to DPS before healers). Everything else has pretty crappy stats for us. There isn't even a ring/neck/cloak with Mastery/Spirit.

 

Compared to MW monks who have good spread healing with ReM + Uplift, just as good or even better stacked healing with Rushing Jade Wind + Chi Burst + Breath of the Serpent (in 6.1). They are much more mobile, not only while healing, but also for just avoiding mechanics with Roll/tiger's lust. The lack a bit in raid CDs compared to shaman since they only have revival, but they also get a tank CD in Life Cocoon. Most of the leather gear has Multistrike, and 7 pieces of gear have the optimal Crit/Multi or Multi/Spirit. They also perform better in situations when range/LOS are a consideration, like on Oregorger and Blackhand. 

 

 

I am pretty concerned with the viability of Resto shamans in this raid tier. It looks like MW monks just do everything a shaman does but better. Even though I have been playing a shaman for a while, I feel that I could help my guild progress better as a different class. What do you guys think? 

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Well... It's pretty sad to agree here, but I feel exactly the same. More than that, I'm doing BRF on my disc priest now - had to switch from the shaman after the first BRF raid. Was feeling completely useless. And saying that, I know how to play resto shaman but it turned mcu more into the hard work than a game recently.

Anyways I will try to PuG at least Normal BRF on my shaman this week-end and we'll see where it all goes.

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You know, this is the Resto Shaman topic that turns up again and again and again over more raid tiers and expansion packs than any other. I have seen this crop up so often and every time I have different thoughts.

 

This time, I think that Vixsin's recent appearance on FinalBossTV had a good go at the discussion. Put short: RShaman have always been designed into a niche, but it's a niche that there is limited demand for in any given tier, and the demand for that niche tends to lessen as expansions advance. At the root of it all are two factors; Chain Heal and Mastery.

 

We're effectively bound to the niche where everyone is stacked up tight and staying on low health for extended periods. That's where the class has the highest potential. Problem is, those two caveats don't intersect very often (if at all). We see time and time again that if you have a RSham in your raid you feel forced into taking decisions which keep your group as clumped up as possible. While that can be made viable, it's not exactly fun to feel constrained like that, either for the raiders or for the healer themselves. In every other aspect, Resto Shaman are middle-of-the-pack at best.

 

One can compensate for that. One can just play better and be satisfied by having to work harder than other classes to achieve similar results. Arguably, that's what RShaman do in non-Mythic groups. But overcoming the barriers put in place by class mechanics doesn't feel rewarding because one doesn't actually get any tangible reward for it.

 

As Vixsin said; our Mastery and our Chain Heal are full of history, full of flavor, and work beautifully and elegantly in a niche. But those niches aren't in much demand, and we have little recourse outside of that. Maybe, just maybe, after years of trying to make this model work, RShaman need to be rebuilt. Maybe Mastery needs to be changed. Maybe Chain Heal needs to be replaced. Maybe.

 

Until then, if your RSham is keeping up with you in your raid, you know they're better than you are. That's just enough to keep me playing.

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This theme does pop up very often. There's a reason that Shamans are the 'moaners' in WoWCrendors Class Stereotypes

Honestly cracks me up everytime I watch it!

 

Edit: I had no idea that the actual video would appear here.. sorry!!!

 

Back on topic - I did consider changing to my Monk early on in the expansion because I wans't really enjoying Shaman Healing. But I changed things around and did a lot of research so now I love Resto too much to give it up. I'm thoroughly enjoying healing on it now. I like having to micro-manage everything!

 

 

Until then, if your RSham is keeping up with you in your raid, you know they're better than you are. That's just enough to keep me playing.

 

Kinda makes me feel better as I'm pretty much on par with the other healers in my raid team. Most of the time anyway... some fights I really suck at! Silly spread healing! I very much look forward to when we're progressing on Mythic.

 

I know that the conditions arent ideal for the way Resto Shaman's work but it's not impossible to make it work and in fact there are a lot of Shaman's out there who are kicking some serious healing butt at the moment (I do not include myself in that by the way). I take comfort in that there will never be a point where Resto Shaman's aren't viable. I just dont think Blizz would ever make a decision that would cause that to happen.

 

If I was to have a Resto Shaman wish-list, my 1 and only wish would be for some kind of fix to our lack of spread raid healing. Sure I can cast Healing Wave till I'm blue in the face, but something like a tweak to CB would be really nice (I do believe Vixsin said this on the FinalBossTV Interview).

 

Chins up everyone! I'm sure that it will get better!

Edited by Starrfyre

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I didn't intent for this to be moaning or complaining, but rather an objective viewpoint that me being a resto shaman for this raid tier is not ideal for mythic progression. I wanted to lay out my reasoning for why they are arguably the worst healing spec and why I think rerolling to monk would serve my raid better. While I do agree that Shamans should probably be reworked considering the niche that Stoove discussed, that is not really what I wanted to get out of this post. I basically wanted to run my logic by other resto shamans about why I feel that switching classes would be the best option to push progression in mythic.

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I didn't intent for this to be moaning or complaining, but rather an objective viewpoint that me being a resto shaman for this raid tier is not ideal for mythic progression....

I basically wanted to run my logic by other resto shamans about why I feel that switching classes would be the best option to push progression in mythic.

I understand that you are interested in insight and not in complaining all over the place :)

Actually I was eating the brain of my RL about exactly the same thing recently.

 

In my opinion, we have two separate discussions here: 1) which healing setup is better for a Mythic progression team 2) what's the place of resto shaman in WoD reality.

I think that it's better to keep these discussions separately because I see situations when one person is talking about part 1 while the other about part 2 and it may cause a bit of unnecessary annoyance.

 

I would strongly agree with both Stoove and Starrfyre about resto shaman place. It is challenging and satisfying on many levels to push forward, master your play and being able to compete with more 'powerful' in WoD classes. 

If you are a person who likes the class and likes challenge, you'll have fun.

 

But being a part of Mythic progression raid team and doing the best there is a completely different discussion, which has almost nothing to do with resto shamans in particular. Here is more an area of RL and healing coord decisions, who will pick the best possible setup for progression fights both for healing and dps. So if you have to switch from shaman to a monk/disc/whatever to maximize healing throughput, it's not a class fault, it's just a different area decisions, if it makes sense.

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Mazukon, 

 

I agree with the rationale that you have provided and I think you are making the right choice. 

 

Point 1: The greater mobility and also greater capability of the monk to do spread healing vastly outperforms the shaman's niche of stacked, low-health healing. This is especially relevant for BRF. If I were to swap mains, this would be my reason. 

 

Point 2: Our CDs, especially with double spirit link, and ancestral guidance coming in 6.1, are actually pretty decent. I wouldn't rank us as being worse off than monks and druids in this aspect. I do feel that our core healing package of riptide, chainheal and healing rain is really weak compared to other healers. The shaman playstyle is like a fireman. You are useless for most of the time, a hero for a short period of time when there is fire, and then back to being useless. 

 

Point 3: I agree that the itemsation is bad. But I would consider this as a minor reason for swapping mains. It is interesting that the gear for BRF is a lot better optimised for monks with all that multistrike gear. 

 

For progression's sake, it's definitely a wise choice to swap to another healer. 

 

The next part is actually my personal opinion. I do feel that Shamans are a few steps behind other healers, but they are not at the stage where they are completely not viable. I'm still the best healer in my raid because I put in a ridiculous amount of effort into being better. I'm around 95% percentile, my fellow healers are at 50-60% percentile. I study damage patterns to plan out my CDs and spell usage, I analyse my own fights and others to identify areas of improvement, I spend a lot of time setting up a good UI to ensure I don't miss anything, etc.  I am staying Shammy because the playstyle is still enjoyable to me. I don't like spamming one spell over and over again. And I feel an immense sense of satisfaction when I can keep up with a race car while driving an average car. 

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Maybe I misinterpreted the thrust of the OP a bit in my response (though I do stand by what I said).

 

What I think it boils down to is that RSham are still viable to run in high-end Mythic content, but somewhat harder to accommodate than other specs. Is your raid willing/able to take the extra difficulty of using an RSham to its potential (and mitigating its weaknesses)?

 

If so, there's no real need to switch classes unless you really want to. On the other hand, if your raid isn't able to take the hit in difficulty (or you personally are feeling like the hit in difficulty isn't worth it), it's definitely a reasonable decision to change to a different healing spec. You wouldn't be crazy to do so in the current environment, that's for sure. I guess that was what the thrust of my first post was trying to aim towards.

 

Either way, good luck and let us know how you get on  =)

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It really makes me sad that people feel this way about Resto Shamans.

 

Just gone thorugh 6 bosses on HC in BRF... healing with 2 Disc Priests, Holy Paladin and a very good Holy Priest was a wee bit depressing! Some of the fights really aren't suited to us haha.

Edited by Starrfyre

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It really makes me sad that people feel this way about Resto Shamans.

 

Just gone thorugh 6 bosses on HC in BRF... healing with 2 Disc Priests, Holy Paladin and a very good Holy Priest was a wee bit depressing! Some of the fights really aren't suited to us haha.

 

I do think that you can be positive about the class, though. It's not like we're completely irrelevant right now, so holding out and just trying to play your best isn't actively punishing your raid in most cases. That's an upside, right?

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I certainly don't think we're irrelevant. We still bring a lot of utility to a raid in the form of our CD's and our Mastery. So we're not completely useless. It is just disappointing that people feel the way they do and that they have considered/are considering switching class.

 

One thing that has really bugged me recently is that Blizz haven't really looked at Resto in any way. At least not as far as I'm aware, looking at MMO Champ and the forums. I guess I kinda feel like we've been forgotten.

 

All the negativity aside, I still enjoy playing my Shaman. The totems, the micro-management, the spell effects, tansmog, the off-spec choices etc etc. I could go on.

 

We're not punisihing our raid teams at the moment and that is a definite upside.

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Sorry to jump in on this thread, but I must admit some aggravation with people saying shamans are bad, you're always near the bottom of meters, you need to do better. 

 

1) For example if you're running 5 healers in normal BRF with 22 people - yeah you probably are running too many healers

[as in my raid last night... course I also did test CBT on most of the fights, came in 3rd on Beastlord, we have 1 of every healer class. Think I found CBT to be more useful on at least 3 of the 10 fights]

 

2) Do you really know how to read logs? Just because shamans are usually in the bottom doesnt mean we're bad. 

[at least my healing officer knows how to read logs unlike my RL and knows I matter when it counts]

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itemization near as I can tell is bad for everybody in BRF; every spec's tier gear has at least 1-2 pieces with substandard itemization and there's a ton of versatility on nontier drops.

 

In general BRF (at least on normal/heroic) doesn't seem so bad for shamans; a lot of the fights actually do involve a substantial amount of stacking, or at least have strat options that do.  We also get some of the stronger tier bonuses, at least among healers.

 

We're not great at mobility/nonstack fights and bad at chasing meters compared to rdruid and monk.  Same old same old, really

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Throwing in my 2 cents (8/10 Heroic).  On a lot of these fights, I do decent, and sometimes I feel like I am only there for CDs.  That said, there are clutch points where my mastery is definitely a make for the raid and has made the difference in bringing us back from the brink.  I would like a bit more mobile healing than SWG, and maybe, let us ES two targets like pallys get two beacons.  I would like a "big" heal back too, I think that would drastically compensate for some of the utility we lost, or else buff HR again.  I would like to try out the 2/4pc and see how it does, because with my raids comp, I feel like I am back in BC and a CH bot so might as well get something out of it. 

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I would like to try out the 2/4pc and see how it does, because with my raids comp, I feel like I am back in BC and a CH bot so might as well get something out of it. 

 

I commented about this on Twitter today: Chain Heal. Chain Heal. Chain Heal. Pop big cooldown. Chain Heal. Everything is grey/red and Orcish. This is just SoO again, right? :P

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That's what I thought as well when I saw our set bonus' come out and both 2 & 4 pc had to deal with chain heal = better like CH because you'll be doing it a lot! Which also made me think the go to talent in BRF would be High Tide. 

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I havnt found many spread raid issues on my shaman so far, going from 10 man guild is MoP to WoD's 20+ raids I've found that chain heal is rarely missing targets, there is often a good place to drop rain and even if there isnt its not as OP as in MoP so we can compete without it.

 

If the dual charges of spirt link change goes live and disc gets a small nerf we will be in a good place, maybe a small buff to our sustained hps, (buff healing stream totem or riptide imho) we will be in a good place.

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Like a few others have said, our strength completely relies on our CDs (HTT, Asc, SLT). If we arent able to use these cd's in crucial situations where the entire raid is below 50% we will forever be last on the healing meters. With that said, Mythic BRF is looking like the raid damage outputs are extremely high, meaning more people at lower hp for more of a fight, making our mastery that much stronger. Unless you're in a top 100 WORLD guild, I think your raid spot should be completely secure, so much as you can play the class to even 90% of it's potential. I think we will be receiving some buffs in the coming weeks once blizz gets the BRF data squared away, or at the very least disc will be toned down another 5-10%. 

 

I would much rather be a resto shaman then be a holy pally or a disc priest, good lord they have some of the most one dimensional specs I've ever played. 

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I would much rather be a resto shaman then be a holy pally or a disc priest, good lord they have some of the most one dimensional specs I've ever played. 

I would like to ask not to demean other classes here. It's not very nice to put down somebody else to feel better with ourselves and the only way it always goes - to holywars and hate posts. So, please, don't.

 

I personally raided on three toons - resto shaman, disc priest and holy pala, on shaman and disc I raid now doing 85-97 percentile on both, so I think that I have a bit of knowledge to say that there are no one dimensional classes or specs if you use its full potential including the utility and not only pressing one button for HoT and other one for AoE. 

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Hello Shamans. I run a Holy/Disc Priest and was going around looking at how others feel about their classes. 

 

When I'm in the guild run with my priest, I go holy as we have a disc. priest already and don't see any benefit of 2 discs. But when our resto shaman is there I'm often 3rd or bottom healer. (Had a restodruid that is now trying new setups and beating me)

 

I've been leveling one of every healer up so I can better understand them and call for cooldowns more accurately, but it's still confusing for me. Almost every resto shaman I come across is able to outperform me (as holy) a few MW monks can, almost every disc priest does and I'm about average with druids and paladins. Even sometimes our blood DK outheals everything except for our disc priest - like today on Operator Thogar.

 

Are you guys normally being beaten by holy priests and others in raiding environments? I feel that I'm pretty competent regarding my class, healing mechanics, boss mechanics, and the like - but when I look at my ratings I'm extremely subpar. I plan on talking with the priest gurus as well but since this was here I wanted to get an opinion from another class that seems to always be #2 in raids.

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Im here to say that I DONT feel behind as a resto shaman. 8/10 H BRF, 10/10 N BRF Im pulling close to or over 40 k heals a second on all heroic fights. In general i'm very close or do a little more then other healers in my guild. In pug groups i can generally destroy the meter.

 

            To me the real question is how are you playing your class?

            When are you healing?

            What are your goals?

 

I attempt to try to time every heal with the bosses abilities or and overall dmg. I put up healing rain or healing stream totem as much as possible. I dont spam chain heal unless needed. Spamming or thinking a shaman is a chain heal machine could be a great reason why your not on the charts. 

 

             You could easily fix this by reading another shamans logs and researching fights before raid nights, KNOWING when to heal to me is a very important factor.

 

I've been following icy veins for a long time. But i created an account today due to the fact that I'm very happy with where i am with healing and my class. From here forward i just try find even more ways to get better. I dont like to see complaints. I do like to do something about them though and attempt to improve.

 

RESTO SHAMMIES FTW 

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Im here to say that I DONT feel behind as a resto shaman. 8/10 H BRF, 10/10 N BRF Im pulling close to or over 40 k heals a second on all heroic fights. In general i'm very close or do a little more then other healers in my guild. In pug groups i can generally destroy the meter.

 

            To me the real question is how are you playing your class?

            When are you healing?

            What are your goals?

 

I attempt to try to time every heal with the bosses abilities or and overall dmg. I put up healing rain or healing stream totem as much as possible. I dont spam chain heal unless needed. Spamming or thinking a shaman is a chain heal machine could be a great reason why your not on the charts. 

 

             You could easily fix this by reading another shamans logs and researching fights before raid nights, KNOWING when to heal to me is a very important factor.

 

I've been following icy veins for a long time. But i created an account today due to the fact that I'm very happy with where i am with healing and my class. From here forward i just try find even more ways to get better. I dont like to see complaints. I do like to do something about them though and attempt to improve.

 

RESTO SHAMMIES FTW 

Mind linking your logs? If you're keeping up or beating your other healers it means that while youre parsing well, I'm more than willing to bet theyre in the 50-60th percentiles if not lower, dictating their underperformance. 

Edited by Houselol

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Well the lack of passive healing in wod for us had really impact on our gameplay, i do not think that other healing classes have that big of an impact on what spell they choose for each situation. We are tower healers and not so mobile healer i am cool with that.but with the lack of some passive support i find myself taking damage from some mechanis on purpose to continue healing someone in worse situation, for example twins - blaze , kromog , reverbrations.And most of the time that should be wrong.Ofc there is the possibility of my skills are not good enough to do better , as a long time raider (all roles except tank) i do feel that i am an above avarege shaman.so what i take out from this is that for most people it is realy hard to keep up with other healers.i am content with the hps i do in most fights because there are more things to healing than meets the eye in a simple dmg meter but the lack of appropriate tools to respond to mechanics as other classes makes me feel disappointed and underperforming.

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I talked with my GM today about my thoughts on this topic and mentioned that I would like to try out monk healing. He said he was skeptical about the switch due to several reasons. 

 

1) Shaman's 3 raid CDs (Tide, Ascendance, Spirit Link) are important parts of the raid strategy planning. We would basically be replacing all three of these with just revival. The tank CD in Life Cocoon is nice, but we have enough paladins and other classes with tank CDs that one more doesn't really affect raid planning. 

 

2) He doesn't really look at nor care about raw healing meters. He more cares that each healer can execute the role assigned, ie disc and pally keep the tanks up, druid and shaman heal the raid and pop big CDs when needed. I also am assigned to be the healer for specific duties such as topping the mushrooms on time in Brackenspore, healing the boat group on Iron maidens, etc. And in those roles I pull lower total numbers but get the job done properly which is what he cares about.

 

3) My raid spot is not in jeopardy, so switching because I feel that I am underperforming doesn't really make sense to him.

 

4) He thinks MW monks are a significantly more difficult class to play. Many of the logs have either really really good monks or absolutely terrible monks. He wants to make sure I can play another healing class to the same level as my shaman before he would let me raid on it. This would involve pugs and logging them so show him.

 

I wanted to make clear, I started this thread because I felt that switching healing specs would help my raid progress better, not because I have a problem playing shaman, I love playing it, but I felt that a switching to a "better" spec would benefit the raid more. My GM definitely seemed to be of the opposite opinion and thought that a shaman healer is very valuable and would not want to swap one out for a monk. Any thoughts on this? 

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