Restoration Shaman State in Shadowlands Alpha - Battle Shaman, Earth Shield, Covenant Abilities

暗影国度由 Jaydaa 发表于 2020/06/18，02:07

Introduction晋升堡垒雷文德斯托加斯特，罪魂之塔通灵战潮赎罪大厅塞兹仙林的迷雾凋魂之殇shouldNy'alotha Eternal Palacemajor

This article is written by Jaydaa a veteran healer and contributing writer to both World of Warcraft content and other Blizzard games content here on Wowhead. I've been raiding in WoW for almost 15 years at various levels of progression. I've contributed to the theorycrafting of multiple healing classes, notably Mistweaver Monks and Restoration Druids. Find me on Twitter or on the Wowhead Discord.

Ancestral GuidanceDiscord ServerShaman Class DiscordWoWAnalyzerSimulationcraftRestoration Shaman火岩潜能烈焰熔炉扭曲的附肢龟裂创伤Baseline Toolkit Changes

根源打击, 火舌武器, 冰霜震击, and 闪电之盾 - While it's nice to receive some additional tools for dealing damage, none of these are particularly that impactful. 根源打击 and 火舌武器 require you to be in melee and do very minimal damage. 闪电之盾 requires you to be melee'd to provide damage which is very unlikely outside of solo content and as a Restoration Shaman you'll most likely run 水之护盾 for the mana regen. 冰霜震击 is probably the most useful of the returning damaging abilities due to the added utility of a 50% slow. While the damage of 冰霜震击 recently received a buff on Alpha, it's likely only going to be used when you either need the slow or when you're moving and 烈焰震击 is on cooldown.

大地之盾 - This talent will be nice to have baseline for the passive healing and 10% healing increase on a single target; however, all the issues that made this a rarely picked talent still remain even as a baseline ability. With BFA, 大地之盾 was put on the GCD making this already low impact ability and maintenance buff feel even worse to maintain on your tank. Where before you could quickly put it up between spell casts, you're now having to expend the GCD to do so. With a 3s internal cooldown and 9 stacks, you're looking at recasting 大地之盾 every 24s or so for normal play or even more often if using the new 大地激涌. If this ability is returning baseline, please make it more impactful for the GCDs spent to maintain. Increase the stacks, give an upfront benefit, increase the healing.

NEW - The mana totem returns for Shadowlands albeit with a 15 yd range. While I don't mind the range restriction to differentiate it from 希望象征, 法力之潮图腾 needs a visual indicator otherwise it'll likely be completely lost during an encounter for other healers. As an interesting and possibly unintended interaction, multiple 法力之潮图腾s currently stack multiplicatively with each other on Alpha. This means having multiple shamans pop 法力之潮图腾 at the same time will yield higher mana returns. For one shaman that's 2x normal mana regen; two shaman 4x normal mana regen; and three shaman 8x normal mana regen and so on and so forth. For a single shaman, 法力之潮图腾 is pretty weak only generating 6.4% max mana with each use compared to the 144% of max mana that you regen every 3 mins between 法力之潮图腾 casts. Fairly weak overall so could use a small buff.

NEW - The mana regen elemental shield returns. As added flair of encircling watery orbs, the ability definitely encapsulates the class fantasy of a Restoration Shaman, but it does little to provide any sort of meaningful gameplay. Yes, the passive mana regen is nice but the mana gained from taking melee hits is likely to be very rare outside of solo content. It's sorta this set and forget buff that doesn't have any real player interaction.

Shadowlands Leveling Perks

NEW (Level 28) Reincarnation now revives you with an additional 20% health.

A nice addition to 复生 to help ensure that you're not instantly killed after reincarnating. Not huge but I'll take it.

Reworked Restoration Shaman Abilities

潮汐奔涌 & 潮汐奔涌 Rank 2 (Level 27) Casting Chain Heal or Riptide reduces the cast time of your next Healing Wave by 30%20% or increases the critical effect chance of your next Healing Surge by 40%. Stacks up to 2 times.

While the nerf to the cast time reduction of a 潮汐奔涌 buffed 治疗波 doesn't seem that huge, it seems unnecessary to do this especially for a class that already struggles to find footing in the heavy single-target healing situations of Mythic+. Perhaps this nerf is to better differentiate 治疗波 and 治疗之涌, but just seems odd but not too impactful.

Flat Healing Increases and Mana Cost Changes

*治疗链 ~25% Healing Increase & Cost changed from 25% to 30% of base mana

*治疗波 ~33% Healing Increase & Cost changed from 9% to 14% of base mana

*治疗之涌 ~8% Healing Increase & Cost changed from 18% to 23% of base mana

*治疗之雨 ~20% Healing Increase

恢复萨满祭司

Flat Damage Changes

烈焰震击 ~37% Damage Decrease

闪电链 ~21% Damage Decrease

熔岩爆裂 ~36% Damage Increase

灵魂链接图腾先祖护佑图腾先祖活力风剪净化术狂风图腾战栗图腾电能图腾大地之盾治疗波治疗之涌火岩潜能精通：深度治疗精通：深度治疗精通：深度治疗Talent Changes

浪潮汹涌 Every 0 mana you spend brings a High Tide, making your next 2 Chain Heals heal for an additional 20%10% and not reduce with each jump.

As the always taken talent for raiding Restoration Shamans, it's no surprise to see this talent nerfed and some of the power directly baked into 治疗链. This will likely mean 奔涌之流 and 升腾 will see more play but will largely depend on final tuning.

大地之盾

This talent isn't bad, but it's not great either. The problem is 大地激涌 as an AoE heal doesn't really do much to solve shaman issues. For reference, 大地激涌 does a little less than the upfront healing of 激流 on 6 nearby targets for the cost of 3 大地之盾 charges and a little more mana than the cost of a 激流. This in total is a bit less than a 治疗链 worth of throughput albeit at a slightly cheaper price and limited to allies near your 大地之盾 on a 20s cooldown. The only real benefit is the instant cast and lower mana cost compared to 治疗链. Easy way to fix this talent is to just allocate all or some of the healing as a single target heal on the 大地之盾 target turning the ability into a 迅捷治愈-like ability allowing Restoration Shamans a way to quickly recover and respond to incoming single target burst damage.

Covenant Abilities

Kyrian:
暮钟图腾 - Versatile and powerful ability with a lot of control. This cheap 1 min cooldown ability comes with a ton of AoE healing and damage. The damage and healing components are separate meaning you'll get 3x healing activations and 3x damage activations. The only real downside is the small 8 yd range for the pulses, but because relocating the totem is off the GCD it makes it easy to reposition to maximize output. The damage is a little lackluster single target, but on multiple targets in Mythic+ this ability will be strong. Ideally, I'd like the activator for the damage to be healing as well since passive damage tends to be more highly valued, but others might also like the control so perhaps a way to choose whether active or passive damage would be nice. Overall a strong covenant ability that will be hard to beat.

召唤执事者 - The steward offers some quality of life options like free talent changes or a vendor to sell things, but it essentially boils down to 静谧之瓶, a glorified healthstone for all intents and purposes. The healing will be nice and contribute albeit minimally to throughput, and the personal bleed, disease, and poison dispel for Restoration Shamans could come in handy as you can't normally dispel those; however, the circumstances where the phial will be invaluable will be few and far between compared to other covenant abilities which are more universally valuable.

Venthyr:
收割链 - Think of this as a free dual 治疗链 plus 闪电链 combo with a variable cooldown based on crit. With a 20yd jump range, players can be a bit more spread out with 收割链 compared to 治疗链's 15yd jump range. The problem with this ability is it doesn't really have many pros in the way of throughput except for the fact that it's free. The actual healing is very similar to 治疗链 without a lot of the extra tie-ins like 浪潮汹涌 or building stacks of 潮汐奔涌. Even if all hits crits reducing the cooldown to 40s, the throughput just doesn't compare to that of 暮钟图腾. The only significant benefit 收割链 has over 暮钟图腾 is allies can be significantly more spread out.

暗影之门 - Quite possibly the star of the covenant signature abilities, it's hard to say no to a 35yd teleport with a minute cooldown even if it has a 1.5s cast time. This type of movement is almost universally valuable and it's hard to think of an occasion where it'd be useless. Full Venthyr dungeon groups can plan skips around this ability. As a Restoration Shaman, I can't turn down additional mobility.

Necrolord:
始源之潮 - This covenant ability comes with a lot of setup. Because this healing is tied directly 激流, you'll need to make good use of your 激流 to ensure that you're maximizing the throughput on targets that will actually need the healing. The upfront healing is significantly less than a 治疗波 to start even when factoring in the applied 激流 but also can't be buffed via 生命释放. Only your cast of 治疗波 benefits from 生命释放 and 波动 not the copied casts. At a 45s cooldown, the healing throughput on this one is comparable with 暮钟图腾 especially when you take 元素回响 and can achieve 5 激流 out at a time. It's also fairly cheap for the extra throughput. The problem comes when you're also not getting any damage out of the ability and only healing. It would be nice if the ability also triggered 熔岩爆裂 on our 烈焰震击 targets when we used 治疗波 and rewarded multitasking 激流 and 烈焰震击. I think allowing the additional 治疗波s to interact with the rest of our toolkit via 波动 and 生命释放 would go a long way in rewarding an even higher skill ceiling.

血肉铸造 - This extra self survivability will be nice and as an absorb will contribute minimally to overall throughput, but where this one loses me is the 4s channel. . I would really like to see the channel time reduced or allowing this ability to channel while moving would go a long way to making this ability more palatable. Even with those changes it's a bit of a hard sell against the other movement oriented covenant signature abilities.

Night Fae:
法夜输灵 - While this covenant ability has an interesting damage to healing mechanic, the fact that the healing throughput scales based on the number of targets means that when you're only facing significantly fewer targets the healing will be much less. Unfortunately, at fewer enemy targets, which is the norm in a lot of PvE content, the healing just can't compete with other covenants. Now throw in a 8yd radius for both the damage and the healing, a 3s channel, and a 2min cooldown and you'll begin to understand why this ability feels like a less versatile 暮钟图腾.

灵魂变形 As someone who adored 野性位移, it's nice to see this come back as an option although more watered down. Blinks and teleports are universally valuable and while it might not be the Venthyr ability this is a strong second place option. You likely won't be coming up with skips for such a limited 10 yard blink, but you get 3 in the 12s duration so you may have some opportunities to blink over some particularly nasty mechanics. It should be noted that you can cast while shapeshifted and you gain the 幽灵狼 if you started out in 幽魂之狼. Comes with a cosmetic collecting minigame which is fantastic.

Kyrian暮钟图腾Kyrian暮钟图腾Lackluster GCDs

大地之盾 - As I mentioned earlier this low impact ability feels more like a maintenance buff especially while on the GCD. Adding something upfront like a small heal would go a long way to making this ability feel better. Alternatively, increasing the number of stacks so fewer refreshes are necessary would limit the impact these GCDs have on your rotation.

法力之潮图腾 - The extra mana is nice, but it's sorta this set and forget type ability. The trickling of mana regen you have normally you get more of but I'm not sure you'll notice the difference. Maybe making the first cast after gaining 法力之潮图腾 free at least gives players some interaction with the totem.

Mythic+ Viability - While there are a lot of factors that determine how well a spec performs in Mythic+ (utility, damage, single target throughput, etc.), I'd really appreciate if future development could be focused on helping Restoration Shamans become stronger and more relevant in dungeon content. I know it's a big ask and there isn't an exact solution, but perhaps the additional systems of Shadowlands could really offer some more tools for Restoration Shamans. For a lot of players the spec tends to let them down in dungeon content causing players to feel forced to class swap to feel more viable. Outside of spamming 治疗之涌, Restoration Shamans feel like they don't have the tools to handle the incoming damage of higher Mythic+.

喷涌灵魂 - This Azerite Trait for 灵魂链接图腾 took an already outstanding ability raised it to another level by adding a throughput component. This made timing the 灵魂链接图腾 an added skill component to dealing with incoming damage. I'm not sure how this functionality could fit in, but I welcome this addition to the toolkit going forward.

[Sign In to Post a Comment] 英文评论（41）

发表评论