Patch 3.0.8 PTR Notes
While many of use can’t wait for 3.1 to come and with it hopefully hard boss encounters and new shiny loot, Blizzard is meanwhile working on balancing things out. For us shamans there aren’t many exciting new things coming. If you are a hunter you might find the patch less fun. If you spammed CoH or WG for the past few weeks you might not enjoy this patch as well. But let’s start with resto changes first (for full patch notes check mmo-champion, as always):
Healing Way doesn’t stack up to 3 times anymore and now increases the effect of subsequent Healing Wave spells on the target by 18%. (Up from 6%)
This is good. But not sure yet if it is worth it. Healing way was fantastic when downranking was possible and healing wave was your single target spamheal. Nowadays I just don’t use healing wave that often, especially not twice in a row. It is ok for a macro with NS. It is very good for patchwerk. But most of the time it’s just one big overheal. When this patch goes live I’ll respecc and see if I have spare points for this one. It mostly depends if include healing focus in future builds or not. If you run 25 man and heroics without healing focus right now please do comment how well that’s working out.
Improved Water Shield has been changed to – You have a 33/66/100% chance to instantly consume a Water Shield Orb when you gain a critical effect from your Healing Wave or Riptide spells, and a 19.8/39.6/60% chance when you gain a critical effect from your Lesser Healing Wave spell.
Yeah I saw this one coming. The better my crit chance got the more insane this talent got. It got really hard to run out of mana at all. But I firmly believe this talent will stay fantasic. I heard from some shamans, that they only put 1-2 points into this talent and got a fantastic mana regeneration. I guess that is over now which I’m ok with. But if you sneak Riptide in as often as possible, LHW will still be a single target powerhouse.
Glyph of Renewed Life – Your Reincarnation spell no longer requires a reagent. (Old – All stats increased by 5% for 1 min when you Reincarnate.)
I liked the old glyph better but hey, freeing up bag spaces is good too.
Magma totem damage has been increased and no longer generate threat. (From 172 to 371 damage for Rank 7)
Yeah yeah I knot it’s not a resto change but I found it worth mentioning. Never forget that you are a hybrid class. Never. You have a good chunk of spelldamage. You have spells available that hurt the bad guys a little bit. And magma totem is definitely high on my list. I loved it for mount hyjal trash and the damage you could do while still being a full time healer was huge. This change is aimed at our elemental friends to give them a good boost in aoe damage but I love this thing already. Just drop the totem for one little global cooldown contribute to raid damage. And hopefully mobs stop killing the totem all the time now. And if you run with a elemental shaman as I do you don’t have to drop flametongue anyway.
CoH and WG getting 6 second cooldowns
That’s it for us shamans but I just can’t resist and I have to mention those 6 sec CD that are incoming for our druid and priest friends.
Do I think that is a good thing? Yes
WG was a great tool for all druids. But it got too good and it did fit too many situations. I know many many druids who used WG with care and when the right moment came. But the spammers where there too. And CoH, well that is just wrong right now. That smarthealing thingy just was a bad idea to begin with.
Do I think we’ll see a balanced game after this patch? I honestly don’t know.
And I really really have my concerns. I understand all priests and druids who see a lot of their healing utility gone with aoe healing capabilites greatly tuned down. Please blizzard change raid damage accordingly or just add mechanics that leave the priests at being excellent raid healers (druids won’t be hurt as much as priest, I think, because they never really competed for the raidhealing task). And most important:
Please don’t let shaman stacking happening again.
I’m happy as it is right now. I do fine at single target healing. I still chainheal but I love my hastened LHW and HW. I riptide as much as possible. I’m so much more flexible. So please don’t push me back in the role of always group healing. Don’t give untalented shamans raidspots for pushing one button over and over while watching TV. I might even agree on a CD on CH just to stop shaman stacking. Even if I don’t think CH can be compared to CoH one to one. CoH being spammable was just fantastic, great and the ultimate “heal the raid” button. CH on the other hand is often a huge frontloaded overheal and so much slower than CoH. After all I hope the final balancing of group healing will be done based on a real raid instances, not on Naxxramas.
Boned (25 player)
The Frozen Throne (10 player)
The Crimson Hall (25 player)
500 Daily Quests Complete
Ice the Frost Lord
Hadronox Denied
Vehicular Gnomeslaughter
Split Personality
Epic
Better Off Dred
The Culling of Stratholme
Heroic: The Culling of Stratholme
The Culling of Time
Was thinking of respeccing to take Healing Way with these changes as to me Ancestral Awakening seems to do very little of any use and so I can drop points from there. (Accounts for approx 2% healing on raid members (not including pets) )
I agree Healing Wave is generally overheal however there are circumstances where it is helpful (Tank taking a lot of damage) and hasted with Tidal Waves it is generally around a 1.5 second cast which gives better HPS than LHW in my experience at least.
Do you find Ancestral Awakening Useful?
Just debating atm whether it’s worth respeccing and using Riptide -> HW -> HW -> CH -> HW -> HW to constantly spam hasted Healing Waves when required. Most of the time it’s not going to be necessary however it’s probably helpful more often than Ancestral Awakening is!
Any thoughts much appreciated!
And btw thanks for this blog, has become must read material for me since I found it a couple of weeks back
AA only gets strong if you single target heal. For me at this point that is if I run heroics. For raiding, especially 25 man where I’m mostly assigned to raid healing it gets very very weak. If single target healing in 25 mans it is ok-ish, if it just wouldn’t heal those stupid pets all the time.
For the numbers on LHW vs HW I have read on EJ, it seems that HW might win the upper hand. IWS would have to proc on around 75% of the LHW crits to be as efficent as HW.
Consider though, that LHW with a decent amount of SP and crit delivers a very good sized heal. If I single target heal a tank I feel much more comfortable if I can spam a fast heal than bombing my big HW.
I personally will respecc comes patch day, kick out elemental weapons out of my build. Take AA and Healing way and maybe ditch healing focus. Still not sure if I’ll be ok without additional spellback resistance. But very curious if healing way is worth its point. Perhaps I might even try out the HW glyph, I’m just so happy with LHW as it is right now.
Another question is if it’s going to be:
33%/66%/100% at 3/3 and gives 18% bonus automatically
OR
100% chance of 18% at 1/1
It doesn’t mention that it is reduced to 1 talent point, just that it gets full effect from 1 Healing Wave and no longer stacks
According to MMO talent calculator it is 100% for 3/3 talent points. For just one point this would be too good a deal.
I’m not sure how I feel about the priest/druid changes. The priests I knew absolutely loved CoH and I can’t blame them. It’s easy-mode healing. But with those two AoE heals on a cooldown, resto shaman have become the one and only AoE healers. If you’re a raid leader, you have to assign the shamans to raid healing in almost any fight.
I didn’t like the fact that Healing Wave (and Healing Way) was useless but I would have preferred them to buff HW instead of nerfing LHW. Then again, I don’t have good enough crit yet to see if the current mana regen is overpowered. If it is, then I guess they had to nerf it.
I don’t think a Riptide->HW->HW->CH->HW->HW rotation will be needed unless you or the tank was crappy gear. Most of the time when I’m healing a tank with HW, I start the cast and then have to cancel it 50-75% of the time. But it’s nice to know that we have a way of pouring out massive heals if needed (i.e. 2 healers die on Patchwork).
I’m very curious how aoe heavy fights turn out now. My guild is very resto shaman heavy anyway so we might not see that much of a difference. Today on malygos one druid in our guild spammed WG, it did account for nearly 80% of his healing with very few overhealing done. This was not intended and this is bad.
On the other hand smart designed heals aoe heals were just bad designed to begin with. So blizzard put them on a 6 sec cooldown in beta. They then found out that this is very bad for group healing strength of priests. So CD goes away. In Naxx CoH and WG now are clearly overpowered, but it isn’t really the content on which tuning should be done anyway. Anyways, CH is back. This is just bad balancing. And I really hope priests get the tools to group heal that won’t make raidleaders think about shaman stacking.