How to Resto, Post - Patch 4.1

Wait! Where's mah mace?

It's been several months now since I really evaluated what I wanted to do with my specc for Cataclysm, and the fact is that so much has changed in these months. Co-efficients have been rejiggered, new abilities designed, other abilities redesigned. So, it's time to take another look at stuff.

A few quick points that will have more detail below:

• Deep Healing mastery was pretty lackluster for resto in its initial design but the numbers for Deep Healing have been significantly increased and now also include indirect healing effects.  This makes it worth another look.
• Focused Insight has fallen out of favor for PvE.
• Telluric Currents remains contentiously debated. 
• Wind Shear no longer misses, making us lean, mean, interrupting machines. Make no mistakes about this: wind shear is the best interrupt in the game. Best. In. Game. Suck on that, rogues.
• Spirit Link Totem would be great if other players would stop running away from it.

How Hard is Healing? And is It Any Fun?

I think I realized: Merinna's healing is lacking because I don't have any maracas.

We don’t want healers to be able to make up for all of the mistakes on the part of the other players

Healers seem like they largely understand that Heroics are challenging, and sometimes get penalized when the rest of the group doesn’t understand that. If you feel like you can’t cast anything but your efficient heal or you’ll run out of mana, then something is going wrong with the fight. Likewise, if you feel like you must spam your inefficient heals to the exclusion of all else, then your group is ignoring key mechanics or is just undergeared.

The game could do a better job of telling a group why they failed so that so much blame doesn’t fall at the feet of the healer.

We do understand that some healers are frustrated and giving up. That is sad and unfortunate. But the degree to which it's happening, at least at this point in time, is vastly overstated on the forums.

The Ghostcrawler

I have heard it said that Ghostcrawler's main is a healing priest, so maybe that explains the level of empathy coming from him recently towards the healer's plight in heroic dungeon groups. I swear, it's like he's just telling us that all the death and carnage in the average heroic run really isn't our fault.

It's the Little Things ...

Hyaaah! Git along lil' doggy!

An update to the Resto changes on the PTR:

The tremor totem range change from 30 yards to 10 has just utterly disappeared. It was never officially altered in any patch updates. I went looking for the original information I read to make sure I wasn't dreaming, and best I could find was that the original post had been edited too.

The mana tide totem has been officially extended to raid wide, which is buff city. Just make sure you coordinate this with any other restos in the guild though.

Restoration Shaman Changes on the PTR

Drink in the Resto Goodness!

Imagine my vague irritation when the Patch 4.0.6 patch notes came out last week with NOT ONE WORD about any changes for Shamans. I mean, Shaman is the best class in WoW, but doesn't mean things are perfect as they are.

So, finding that Zarhym had posted about some changes today to include Shaman changes was definitely a positive step. And zing, are there a lot of resto changes in there.

The Big Ones:
Mana Tide Totem: right now, this increases the spirit-based mana regeneration of nearby players by 350% of their spirit. The new Mana Tide Totem will increase regeneration by 400% of the Shaman's spirit. This is, of course, a general, if slight, buff to regen, but it is actually a significant bonus to any DPS casters in our groups who never stack spirit in the first place (350% of zero is zero, after all). But, in the big-big picture, this really only restores the functionality of the Tide to what it was before Cataclysm, when it offered a straight MP5 bonus and didn't muck about with Spirit ratings.