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

Shadowlands Publié 18/06/2020 à 02:07 par Jaydaa

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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 ShamanPotentiel ignéLe Creuset des flammesAppendice dénaturéBlessure hémorragiqueBaseline Toolkit Changes

Frappe primordiale, Arme langue de feu, Horion de givre, and Bouclier de foudre - While it's nice to receive some additional tools for dealing damage, none of these are particularly that impactful. Frappe primordiale and Arme langue de feu require you to be in melee and do very minimal damage. Bouclier de foudre 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 Bouclier d’eau for the mana regen. Horion de givre is probably the most useful of the returning damaging abilities due to the added utility of a 50% slow. While the damage of Horion de givre 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 Horion de flammes is on cooldown.

Bouclier de terre - 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, Bouclier de terre 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 Bouclier de terre every 24s or so for normal play or even more often if using the new Afflux terrestre. 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 Symbole d’espoir, Totem de vague de mana 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 Totem de vague de manas currently stack multiplicatively with each other on Alpha. This means having multiple shamans pop Totem de vague de mana 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, Totem de vague de mana 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 Totem de vague de mana 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 Réincarnation to help ensure that you're not instantly killed after reincarnating. Not huge but I'll take it.

Reworked Restoration Shaman Abilities

Raz-de-marée & Raz-de-marée 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 Raz-de-marée buffed Vague de soins 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 Vague de soins and Afflux de soins, but just seems odd but not too impactful.

Flat Healing Increases and Mana Cost Changes

*Salve de guérison ~25% Healing Increase & Cost changed from 25% to 30% of base mana

*Vague de soins ~33% Healing Increase & Cost changed from 9% to 14% of base mana

*Afflux de soins ~8% Healing Increase & Cost changed from 18% to 23% of base mana

*Pluie guérisseuse ~20% Healing Increase

Chaman Restauration

Flat Damage Changes

Horion de flammes ~37% Damage Decrease

Chaîne d’éclairs ~21% Damage Decrease

Explosion de lave ~36% Damage Increase

Totem de lien d'espritTotem de protection ancestraleVigueur ancestraleCisaille de ventPurgeTotem de bouffée de ventTotem de séismeTotem condensateurBouclier de terreVague de soinsAfflux de soinsPotentiel ignéMaîtrise : Soins profondsMaîtrise : Soins profondsMaîtrise : Soins profondsTalent Changes

Marée haute 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 Salve de guérison. This will likely mean Afflux and Ascendance will see more play but will largely depend on final tuning.

Bouclier de terre

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

Covenant Abilities

Kyrian:
Totem carillonneur - 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.

Invocation de régisseur - The steward offers some quality of life options like free talent changes or a vendor to sell things, but it essentially boils down to Flasque de sérénité, 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:
Moisson en chaîne - Think of this as a free dual Salve de guérison plus Chaîne d’éclairs combo with a variable cooldown based on crit. With a 20yd jump range, players can be a bit more spread out with Moisson en chaîne compared to Salve de guérison'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 Salve de guérison without a lot of the extra tie-ins like Marée haute or building stacks of Raz-de-marée. Even if all hits crits reducing the cooldown to 40s, the throughput just doesn't compare to that of Totem carillonneur. The only significant benefit Moisson en chaîne has over Totem carillonneur is allies can be significantly more spread out.

Porte des ombres - 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:
Vague primordiale - This covenant ability comes with a lot of setup. Because this healing is tied directly Remous, you'll need to make good use of your Remous to ensure that you're maximizing the throughput on targets that will actually need the healing. The upfront healing is significantly less than a Vague de soins to start even when factoring in the applied Remous but also can't be buffed via Déchaînement de la vie. Only your cast of Vague de soins benefits from Déchaînement de la vie and Ondulation not the copied casts. At a 45s cooldown, the healing throughput on this one is comparable with Totem carillonneur especially when you take Écho des éléments and can achieve 5 Remous 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 Explosion de lave on our Horion de flammes targets when we used Vague de soins and rewarded multitasking Remous and Horion de flammes. I think allowing the additional Vague de soinss to interact with the rest of our toolkit via Ondulation and Déchaînement de la vie would go a long way in rewarding an even higher skill ceiling.

Chair recomposée - 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:
Transfusion faërique - 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 Totem carillonneur.

Forme d’âme As someone who adored Transfert bestial, 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 Esprit du loup if you started out in Loup fantôme. Comes with a cosmetic collecting minigame which is fantastic.

KyrianTotem carillonneurKyrianTotem carillonneurLackluster GCDs

Bouclier de terre - 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.

Totem de vague de mana - 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 Totem de vague de mana 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 Afflux de soins, Restoration Shamans feel like they don't have the tools to handle the incoming damage of higher Mythic+.

Esprits jaillissants - This Azerite Trait for Totem de lien d'esprit took an already outstanding ability raised it to another level by adding a throughput component. This made timing the Totem de lien d'esprit 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.

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