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Lyanna Stark

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Resto shamans in 25s seem pretty underpowered compared to holy priests and druids. If we're going for needing at least one shaman I'm at the point where I'd rather have an elemental or possibly an enhancement, at least on 10-man. Might be sample size too, mind you; we've gotten a few recent meh restos. But other comments on other boards (famously, Ensidia) complain about resto shamans too.

What do y'all think of the next patch and the way they're going to be doing tier gear?

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I actually found the opposite, Aratan, when I was levelling my Shamcow. Not that I had a problem with mail drops, but on top of that there were loads of cloth items being thrown at me by mages who didn't want it because it didn't have spirit, or hit, or because it had mp5 or haste. I was epicced out within hours of hitting 80, it felt like. Edit to add- cross posted with Lyanna, totally agree on the loot.

Should have perhaps clarified. My shaman is at lvl 66, and there seems to be a bit of a dead zone in the gear at the moment. Probably mainly due to there being few 5-man runs in Outland instances. And there don't seem to be many quest loots that are an upgrade for me.

I guess I could dual-spec resto and find groups a lot more easily and be the only person rolling on mail, cloth and leather - Outland seems to be nothing but DKs at the moment.

I am sure that when I hit 70 and can move on to Northrend that the gearing will increase.

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Resto shamans in 25s seem pretty underpowered compared to holy priests and druids. If we're going for needing at least one shaman I'm at the point where I'd rather have an elemental or possibly an enhancement, at least on 10-man. Might be sample size too, mind you; we've gotten a few recent meh restos. But other comments on other boards (famously, Ensidia) complain about resto shamans too.

What do y'all think of the next patch and the way they're going to be doing tier gear?

Our resto shaman is our most efficient healer from the stand point of lowest overheal, and no healing target deaths. I will agree that Holy Priests and Resto Druids bring more to the table for raid healing, but the synergy of totems is not to be denied.

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Should have perhaps clarified. My shaman is at lvl 66, and there seems to be a bit of a dead zone in the gear at the moment. Probably mainly due to there being few 5-man runs in Outland instances. And there don't seem to be many quest loots that are an upgrade for me.

I guess I could dual-spec resto and find groups a lot more easily and be the only person rolling on mail, cloth and leather - Outland seems to be nothing but DKs at the moment.

I am sure that when I hit 70 and can move on to Northrend that the gearing will increase.

Absolutely. Going through Outland right now is painful. Push hard for 68, hop on the zepplin, and don't look back. And at 66 you're probably dealing with the horrible BEM side grades that are lawltastic in their mediocrity. At least the vendors will buy 'em.

I wouldn't even try for instance groups in Outland, just quest your eyes out.

Luckily on the server me and GoN are leveling on right now, Northrend is still pretty active even for low 70s groups, plus we got the ole tank/healer combo working in our favor again. Though we did have 3 dps in a UK run the other day that almost kept us from finishing it. Between the dc'd mage and the blood DK who stood next to me through half the fights before engaging for some reason it was a close call. But if it was always easy, we'd get spoiled.

We hit 68, abandoned all Outland quests sitting in our logs still and ran for our lives back to Azeroth.

Course, once 3.2 hits and we're both nerfed and playing dead classes (lol) we'll probably just run around fishing and cooking buff food for people who still have playable characters. (no, this is never gonna get old for me)

Gotta hit 80 before the fall semester begins. Push it to the limit.

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Thanks for the advice Lyanna. Will try my offspec as disc and test both to see how it goes. Why improved inner fire though? I'd think silent resolve would be better? Seems like disc is a tad more complex in cast order, so will have to practices since I'm use to just spamming heals.

DK tanking is badass since it is basically the same as DPSing, plus you get to pull and tank which adds an additional layer of complexity. Plus I'm a DK-cow, so I'm made to tank.

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Cue, threat doesn't matter at all any more, and you almost never care whether your spells are dispelled in PvE. Improved inner fire adds 54 spellpower by itself. It's basically the case that Imp Inner Fire is okay, but silent resolve is crap.

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Shamans are a little underpowered in all 3 specs in both pve and pvp but just like many pointed out they are needed. Resto shamans was really good in naxx but the fights in Ulduar meant that the shaman that played very chain heal heavy and didn't adapt got behind. Chain Heal with it's long cast and sharp drop off is usually a step behind. The plus side is that it can cover both the tank and melee dps group. With my shaman I usually do spot healing with a occasional chain heal if I'm on raid and more tank healing.

I feel like I bring something to the raid even if there is a elemental and a enhance in the 25 man raid. We are just downed Yogg on 25 last reset for the first time with our more casual raid group so I don't know how I will perform in hardmodes yet but I'm not worried. I'm guessing it is the min - maxers who are turning away from the class more and more and rerolling something else seeing the hardcore guilds using as little shamans as they can get away with.

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Resto shamans in 25s seem pretty underpowered compared to holy priests and druids. If we're going for needing at least one shaman I'm at the point where I'd rather have an elemental or possibly an enhancement, at least on 10-man. Might be sample size too, mind you; we've gotten a few recent meh restos. But other comments on other boards (famously, Ensidia) complain about resto shamans too.

What do y'all think of the next patch and the way they're going to be doing tier gear?

While chain heal needs a buff, I think saying shamans are weak or underpowered is wrong. Druids expecially will have an edge over others as they can own meters with ease, but it's really more about being competent than the class nowadays.

Our real clunker is normally a holy priest in 4/5 T8.5, so it's really more skill than class, imho. Depending on your setup, and the fact that shamans are rarer than pigshit, a lot of guilds really appreciate having a resto shaman or two, or three. Bloodlust, totems, mana spring, healing stream (on Vezax) self rez aren't bad to have at all. Also, on Yoggie, the fact that shamans can dispell almost everything Yoggie throws at you really helps.

Regarding hard modes, sure, you want to min/max more, but again, it's more about gear and skill than class here, imho.

Also, when our ele shaman raids, he's normally in the top 3 DPS spots, so I don't know why people complain about ele shamans being bad. Our enh shaman is a bit undergeared and tends to die lots, so not sure about him tbh.

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I think the underpowered reputation comes from thinking of them as Chain Heal Bots. I think there are more efficient ways to heal a raid, considering the range restrictions on chain heal and how freaking spread out we always seem to be in Ulduar. I think a resto shaman would have to be pretty mediocre for you to consider not bringing him/her as a healer on a 10 man run. I realise I am a little biased as I am running 10mans exclusively as a resto shaman, but at the same time I can't help but think if we're two healing hardmodes, the class can't be all bad. I certainly don't consider myself exceptional. `

Our ele and enhancement shamans have certainly never underperformed for us, so I've got no complaints there. I did try playing enhance for an alt run and I hated it. I just don't enjoy DPSing in general, I think.

Hit 74 last night on the DK tank. Was a breeze. We had a half hour where it felt like we wracked up a million XP. Or thereabouts. Reckon AN is calling our names.

I still can't believe how much fun it is. We pull 7 or 8 mobs at a time just for the hell of it. We pull adds with elites. I am learning bad, kamikaze tank habits. I have no fear. I trust my shammy healbot implicitly.

Aratan- regarding gear, I totally get what you mean now. I don't remember many upgrades until I hit Northrend. Then it was heavenly.

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Yeah just looking at the shaman resto tree, if you're just spamming brain heal, that's like a Holy priest only spamming CoH pre-nerf: no brain, no thought, just LOLspam. And it doesn't make a good healer at all, even if you're topping the lists.

I'm certain when you do stuff like "One light in the Darkness", 25 man "Firefighter" and Algalon resto shamans may fall behind priests and druids, and hopefully Blizzard will address that by utilising already good synergy between talents (like riptide, LHW/HW and CH synergy fpr instance).

Normally I am not too impressed by whatever Ensidia does tho, as I feel their experiences aren't relevant for 99.9% of all players who raid. I look at them more as beta testers who are part of tuning the encounters for us "normal" players. For if it is one thing they are not, it is normal players. And by "normal" I mean anyone not on the "Top 100 WoW guilds in the world" so the definition is pretty wide.

Thanks for the advice Lyanna. Will try my offspec as disc and test both to see how it goes. Why improved inner fire though? I'd think silent resolve would be better? Seems like disc is a tad more complex in cast order, so will have to practices since I'm use to just spamming heals.

Improved inner fire gives spellpower, like kalbear noted :) It doesn't do so until you hit 74 I think as the lower ranks won't do shit. You will rarely have problems with threat in instances unless the tank really, really really sucks. And then shield yourself and slam your PS button. PS gives 5% less threat as well, plus it reduces incoming damage by a lot, meaning you can by hitting shield, PS and fade survive most "OH SHIT" situations that does not involve a raid boss hitting you in the face. :)

Healing threat problems are normally far smaller in WotlK than before and I have found that the threat reducing talents you took as a matter of course before you really don't need to bother with anymore.

As for "cast order", I don't think healers ever have cast orders a such. You just have to adapt to the situation, i.e. you need to know when the boss will burst and if it will burst, and whether the fight is long, and possibly if you may be incapacitated during any time of the fight.

For 5 man instances, I normally pre-shield the tank as disc, and put a ProM on the tank. Most of the time I don't have to fade once ProM goes off, since the shield has to wear off first, and by then the tank normally has a bit of threat. ProM crits a lot, so perhaps the tank may even get inspiration when it goes off, for more mitigation. Then renew as a buffer.

If you're healing a warrior tank as Disc, check his rage bar before shielding. If he is rage starved, stick to direct heals. If he is good, spam shields to your hearts' content. Staple heal as Disc is Flash heal, with penance for bursts. When you're a bit undergeared, I normally spammed FH and shield and prom, saving Penance for those huge bursts, but when you get more confident you can use Penance as your staple heal and utilise ProM and shields as buffers, and flash as filler. The Penance glyph is a must as Disc, and the other best in slot are FH and PW: shield.

Holy you are stuck with Greater Heal if you're not very well geared, and Greater Heal is a HUUUUUUUGE mana sink of epic proportions. If you're geared, your Flash heals will normally cover where before you'd had to spam slow, expensive Gheals. Hence why I think Holy is meh for 5 man instances. For AoE heavy encounters you have CoH and PoH, but Disc has Holy Nova and a guaranteed haste capped PoH if you shield somebody before. Plus you can shield spam your group and get absorbs while you're spot healing people who are low. Holy PoH CAN be hasted to the max if you have full stacks of serendipity up, but you may or may not, depending. Also, Holy shield has a CD and is weak compared to Disc's strong absorption capabilities.

Another sweet thing with Disc is the larger mana pool, due to mental agility. It basically means more spells before you go dry. Raid buffed I sit on 20.5k mana something as Holy, and almost 23k as Disc. :) My penance normally heals for well over 10k, around 2-3k less than a Gheal, but costs a fraction of the mana of a Gheal, and frontloads far more. Penance is 16% of base mana while Gheal is 32% of base mana. Plus with Penance you have three chances to proc Inspiration while with Gheal you have only one. :)

Two words of warning tho with Disc:

- Compared to other healers in raids, you WILL be low on healing done. If you raid with complete meter spamming noobs, they might not grasp that Disc is about absorption and prevention, and kick you. If this is a worry, install the recount mod for absorption done, and laugh in their faces.

- Some tanks get freaked out by getting shielded a lot. Especially warriors with rage issues can find it a bit worrying since they may have threat issues. Normally this is not a problem tho, unless the warrior overgears the instance, and in that case you can toss a ProM and a renew and tab out anyway :P

Oh and btw? I saw somebody yesterday called "Quellar" on our server. :thumbsup:

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Hit 74 last night on the DK tank. Was a breeze. We had a half hour where it felt like we wracked up a million XP. Or thereabouts. Reckon AN is calling our names.

I still can't believe how much fun it is. We pull 7 or 8 mobs at a time just for the hell of it. We pull adds with elites. I am learning bad, kamikaze tank habits. I have no fear. I trust my shammy healbot implicitly.

Yeah we burned through the early Dragonblight quests like buttah. Half the time I didn't know where we were going or what I was supposed to be doing. And trees are a trap. Beware.

We've died a couple times cause SOMEONE likes to jump off any cliff that comes along even if the water down below is only ankle deep. That's how that glyph that does away with needing Ankhs to self rez pays for itself a bazillion times over.

I finally bought dual spec and went ele since I won't really have to switch gear since I'll only be ele while we quest. Now if only I can get off an LB before the mobs die.

In about 2 hours of fishing in that Dalaran fountain last night I got all but one coin. Kael'Thas Sunstrider. After 2 more hours of not getting it I fell asleep. To make me feel better, a Nelf standing next to me got all his. To make me feel even better, two female draenei fished next to me and teased each other. And I know you guys will make me feel even more better by informing me they were probably played by guys.

On the plus side, Fishing 440 or so now. Woot!

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By comparison to the last 10 man I did, tonight was awesome. We did every hard mode save Mimiron, got 7 people their rusted drakes, 2-shot Vezax hardmode for the first time and 1-shot Yogg's hard mode (1 watcher) for the first time. That was my first time on my druid for yogg-10. Really crazy, awesome fight. Sanity without sanity wells is a really intense experience. Even got two pieces of T8 gear, giving me a full set.

I had signed on expecting to do Algalon - and instead he's the only boss up. All I need for my rusted is Mimiron. Really looking forward to trying Algalon; Vezax was something of a test bed for me (trying out super high armor, armor pots and elixirs) and it worked really well.

I hope the other group did okay.

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Did my first run of UK and Nexus as Resto Shammy (72). This is the first time i played as a healer so it was exciting. Everything went pretty smoothly so found it a lot of fun. Earthshield was doing around 1k crits which was amazing (i think!). For some reason the only person i had trouble keeping alive was myself. I pay attention to everyone elses hp bar so much that i forget to look at my own :/

Plus, i have Bloodlust so i feel important :smug:

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We've died a couple times cause SOMEONE likes to jump off any cliff that comes along even if the water down below is only ankle deep. That's how that glyph that does away with needing Ankhs to self rez pays for itself a bazillion times over.
This happened last night with me in Dragonblight, though I thought that I cleared the shallow parts. I hit level 74 too last night. Dragonblight is fun, but sometimes frustrating. The Battle for Undercity was definitely the most fun I had in this game in some time, especially since UC was my "base of operations" for my BE pally as he leveled in Azeroth. I also regularly do the dailies in Coldara (capturing drakes) and Wyrmrest (drake dog-fighting) to begin the slow process of leveling my rep with the Wyrmrest Accord. I'm now in the Grizzly Hills, which is not really all that fun right now. It really does seem like Howling Bore Part 2. (When I first got to Northrend, I tried Howling Fjord, but I preferred the Borean Tundra for Horde.) But I am prot-specced (talk about amazing survivability), and I had loads of fun tanking Nexus and UK, since the quest rewards were frequently blue plate tanking gear.
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I'm now in the Grizzly Hills, which is not really all that fun right now. It really does seem like Howling Bore Part 2.

I find Grizzly Hills to be the least appealing zone in Northrend. There is no rep there (that I can remember) to be gained from questing, and furthermore there are too many of those annoying runed giants in the eastern part of the zone.

I did the zone on my main and on my next alt, but have skipped it on my next two toons. I may go back and do it for the gold at some later point, but it really is one I would skip if at all possible.

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I find Grizzly Hills to be the least appealing zone in Northrend. There is no rep there (that I can remember) to be gained from questing, and furthermore there are too many of those annoying runed giants in the eastern part of the zone.

I did the zone on my main and on my next alt, but have skipped it on my next two toons. I may go back and do it for the gold at some later point, but it really is one I would skip if at all possible.

Where would you recommend that I should go then as a level 74 toon?
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At 74? Have you finished up BorTun/HF and Dragonblight? Between those three zones Sil and I got to 77, and then it was time for Storm Peaks.

I'd definitely do ZulDrak if you think you can manage it. Grizzly hills is short though. But really - I'd just do the first two zones. They're well-designed, they flow nicely, and they're easy - and quests give exactly the same XP and it takes almost exactly the same amount of xp to go from level to level.

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At 74? Have you finished up BorTun/HF and Dragonblight? Between those three zones Sil and I got to 77, and then it was time for Storm Peaks.

I'd definitely do ZulDrak if you think you can manage it. Grizzly hills is short though. But really - I'd just do the first two zones. They're well-designed, they flow nicely, and they're easy - and quests give exactly the same XP and it takes almost exactly the same amount of xp to go from level to level.

I soloed all of the quests in Dragonblight. All I have left in DB are a few group quests and the spider city dungeon. And I skipped just one quest about escorting a donkey in BorTun. The quests in HF are now all in the green. I may go back and so some of them, but I may just push through Grizzly Hills. I guess I could try Zul'drak. I think that my prot pally is mostly used to dealing with mobs that are slightly higher level.
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Where would you recommend that I should go then as a level 74 toon?

Did you get the "Might of the Dragonblight" achievement? Otherwise you've missed a couple :) There are loads of quest hubs in Dragonblight and some of them are quite easy to miss, like the stone giant hiding in a snowy valley near Dalaran.

Zul'Drak was a fun zone to level in, I thought. I thought Borean Tundra was kinda meh, and DB ok, just large. Storm Peaks definitely had the most fun quests.

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