 |
| 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.
The new Tide totem also ignores anything that would temporarily increase your spirit rating, like a trinket or Heartsong, which will likely negate that 50% buff at the top, and then some, if you were being clever to wait for a procc before hitting your totem up til now.
One other thing about the Tide: I think this is the first time that one player's stats will have such a direct impact on another's buff. I think it may increase the value of stacking spirit for the resto shaman getting ready to raid as well. Which would be very exciting if it weren't for so much general absence of spirit on the gear I'm picking up.
Tremor Totem: Nerf City, man. The biggest problem here is that they reduced the range from 30 yards to 10 yards, which means that when the AoE Fear hits your party and everybody scatters in every direction, nobody else in your party will be within range of the totem when you drop it. The mechanic of waiting up to four seconds for the totem to pulse seems to be gone, which means we ought to be able to break a warlock's fear instantly in PvP, but we'll be completely defenseless when the lock fears again seven seconds later and we are waiting out that juicy, new one-minute CD. Unacceptable.
This change in totem function seems pretty similar to the reason they killed our Cleansing Totem. It makes the whole process of breaking effects more of a "conscious decision" than just having the problem covered. But they took away so much! And it's a pretty serious PvP nerf. And, it's yet another fast cast button I'm going to have to map on my keyboard somewhere.
The Small Ones:
Greater Healing Wave: a 10% mana cost hike for 20% more healing seems like a buff. Except that I removed GHW from the board after it was shown that Healing Surge had comparable hps for slightly lower mps, and about half the cast time. I'm sure this rejiggers the math and I have to scoot all my buttons around again to put the damn thing back. But I'm going to wait til somebody does the math.
Cleansing Waters: now has a 0.5 second CD. Cleanse remains capable of removing a curse and a magic effect at the same time. This new CD means the healing won't procc two times for the two effects. No big deal.
Deep Healing: Increased effect from 20% to 24% and each point of additional mastery from 2.5% to 3%. This is a straight buff to resto mastery, except that last I looked, no one had discovered a way to model this effect to determine how it really compares to other stats. The intelligentsia at Elitist Jerks recommend against resto mastery because the healing gains have been comparable to crit rating gains, over all, but they don't procc happy things like Ancestral Awakening or Improved Water Shield. An increase in stat performance is an increase, but I'm not sure if it shall mandate new stat priorities.
Chain Heal: 10% buff to healing. Good.
Across the board, I think there are gains here for resto Shaman, but how it affects our preparation and spell use is a bit hard to put a finger on still. I hope to read some input from the PTR on this soon
No comments:
Post a Comment