First Impression of the Restoration Shaman Rework in The War Within - Guide Writer Feedback

The War Within Publié 08/07/2024 à 23:49 par Theun

Our Class Guide Writers share their expert opinions based on rigorous testing and theorycrafting in hopes to contextualize the various changes coming in the War Within. Check out all of our released editorials in our new Editorial Section.

Wowhead Editorials

The War Within Beta Development Notes

SHAMAN

Many talents have moved locations or have had their pathing updated in all trees.
New Ability: Skyfury – Harness the fury of the Windlord to grant a target ally 2% Mastery and empower their auto attacks to have a 20% chance to instantly strike again for 1 hour. If the target is in your party or raid, all affected party and raid members will be affected. Learned at level 17.

Developer’s note: We’re aware of issues with the new Skyfury raid buff, and we expect to address it with hotfixes to the Beta tomorrow.

New Talent: Elemental Resistance – Healing from Healing Stream Totem reduces Fire, Frost, and Nature damage received by 6% for 3 seconds. Healing from Cloudburst Totem reduces Fire, Frost, and Nature damage taken by 3% for 3 seconds.
New Talent: Refreshing Waters – Your Healing Surge is 25% more effective on yourself.
New Talent: Traveling Storms – Thunderstorm now can be cast on allies within 40 yards, reduces enemies movement speed by 60%, and knocks enemies 25% further.
New Talent: Seasoned Winds – Interrupting a spell with Wind Shear decreases your damage taken from that spell school by 15% for 18 seconds. Stacks up to 2 times.
New Talent: Encasing Cold – Frost Shock snares its targets by an additional 10% and its duration is increased by 2 seconds.
New Talent: Arctic Snowstorm – Enemies within 10 yards of your Frost Shock are snared by 30%.
New Talent: Ascending Air – The cooldown of Wind Rush Totem is reduced by 30 seconds and its movement speed effect lasts an additional 2 seconds.
New Talent: Enhanced Imbues – The effects of your weapon imbues are increased by 20%.
New Talent: Stone Bulwark Totem – Summons an Earth Totem at the feet of the caster for 30 seconds, granting the caster a shield absorbing damage for 10 seconds, and an additional absorb every 5 seconds. 2 minute cooldown.
New Talent: Jet Stream – Wind Rush Totem’s movement speed bonus is increased by 10% and now removes snares.
New Talent: Primordial Bond – While you have an elemental active, your damage taken is reduced by 5%.
Voodoo Mastery has been redesigned – Your Hex target is slowed by 70% during Hex and for 6 seconds after it ends. Reduces the cooldown of Hex by 15 seconds.
Flurry moved from Class tree to the Enhancement tree.
The cooldown of Gust of Wind has been reduced to 20 seconds (was 30 seconds).
Earthgrab Totem and Windrush Totem no longer share a choice node.
Lightning Lasso and Thundershock no longer share a choice node.
The following talents are now 1 point:

Totemic Focus
Elemental Warding
Nature’s Guardian
Winds of Al’Akir
Nature’s Fury
Totemic Surge

The following talents have been removed:

Go With The Flow
Flurry
Maelstrom Weapon
Enfeeblement
Stoneskin Totem
Tranquil Air Totem
Ancestral Defense
Surging Shields
Swirling Currents

Hero Talents

Farseer (Restoration/Elemental)

Restoration

Undulation can now trigger Call of the Ancestors.

Totemic (Enhancement/Restoration)

Restoration

Healing from Chain Heal from Totemic Rebound increased by 400%.

Restoration

New Talent: Tidewaters – When you cast Healing Rain, each ally with your Riptide on them is healed.
New Talent: First Ascendant – The cooldown of Ascendance is reduced by 60 seconds.
New Talent: Preeminence – Your Haste is increased by 25% while Ascendance is active and its duration is increased by 3 seconds.
New Talent: Reactive Warding – When refreshing Earth Shield, your target is healed for each stack of Earth Shield they are missing. When refreshing Water Shield, you are refunded mana for each stack of Water Shield missing.
New Talent: White Water – Your critical heals have 215% effectiveness instead of the usual 200%.
New Talent: Spouting Spirits – Spirit Link reduces damage taken by an additional 5%, and it restores health to all nearby allies 1 second after it is dropped. Spouting Spirit’s healing is decreased beyond 5 targets.
Spiritwalker’s Tidal Totem has been redesigned – After using Mana Tide Totem, the cast time of your next 3 Healing Surges is reduced by 100% and their mana cost is reduced by 50%.
Master of the Elements has been redesigned – Casting Lava Burst increases the healing of your next Healing Surge by 30%, stacking up to 2 times. Healing Surge applies Flame Shock to a nearby enemy when empowered by Master of the Elements.
Improved Earthliving Weapon has been redesigned – Earthliving receives 150% additional benefit from Mastery: Deep Healing. Healing Surge always triggers Earthliving on its target.
Earthen Harmony has been redesigned – Earth Shield reduces damage taken by 5% and its healing is increased by up to 150% as its target’s health decreases. Maximum benefit is reached below 50% health.
Downpour has been redesigned – Casting Healing Rain activates Downpour, allowing you to cast Downpour within 6 seconds. Downpour: A burst of water at the target location heals up to 5 injured allies with 12 yards and increases their maximum health by 10% for 6 seconds.

Downpour is twice as effective for Totemic Restoration Shamans.

Living Stream has been redesigned – Now increases Healing Stream Totem’s healing by 100%, decaying over its duration.
Lava Surge is now learned at level 12 and has been removed from the class tree.
Current Control now reduces the cooldown of Healing Tide Totem by 45 seconds (was 30 seconds).
Mana Tide Totem’s radius is now 40 yards.
Ancestral Awakening now triggers at a 20% base chance and increases to a 40% chance when activated by a Critical Strike.
Torrent now additionally increases the chance for Riptide’s initial heal to critically strike by 8/15%.
Water Totem Mastery now activates on a chance, but its effect has been increased to 3 seconds of reduction.
Water Shield now has 9 charges.
Primordial Wave’s cooldown has been reduce to 30 seconds (was 45 seconds).
Healing Rain now heals 5 targets (was 6) and healing increased by 17%.
Acid Rain now damages 5 enemies (was 6) and damage increased by 16%.
Overflowing Shores now heals 5 targets (was 6) and healing increased by 14%.
Wavespeaker’s Blessing is now a 2-point talent.
The following talents are now 1 point:

Tidebringer
Deluge
Improved Earthliving Weapon

The following talents have been removed:

Improved Primordial Wave
Tumbling Waves
Continuous Waves
Resonant Waters
Flash Flood
Stormkeeper
Refreshing Waters

First Impressions

The Class and Spec trees for Restoration Shaman feel like they've finally gotten a fresh coat of paint. Some of the mandatory throughput nodes in our Class tree are now gone, allowing us to pick up some extra utility or defensives which is very nice. is now baseline, which is a huge quality of life improvement - no longer needing to sacrifice a talent point in our spec tree for a relatively minor damage gain. Small changes like this help the spec feel much more complete. And perhaps most notably, we finally have a Raid Buff in which should help all 3 specs of Shaman get into groups, rather than just Enhancement (sorry Enhancement). The bottom section of our spec tree needs probably the most work, but I think it's salvageable with a few shifts as far as which talents go where - it feels like we have most of the pieces of the puzzle, but they're just not in the right spots yet. I'll cover more of the specifics and feedback points below, but this is a fantastic first pass at a tree overhaul for Restoration Shamans, and with some tuning to spells that sort of feel left behind like and , I think the spec is set up quite nicely for both Raid and Mythic+.

I am a little worried about amount of power that it seems Restoration Shaman will have now from our cooldowns. can be made into a 2-minute cooldown, is a 2-minute cooldown (which pairs exceptionally well with ), can be made into a 2-minute cooldown with , and we now also have access to which turns into an extra healing cooldown. In general, the more dependent a spec is on their cooldowns, the less their rotational spell casts will do, and it already feels like some of our rotational spells such as and are significantly lagging behind the rest of our kit.

One key change I do want to point out is now gaining will proc instead of only . After playing around with it some, this makes Farseer feel quite a bit better in Mythic+ than it did before (tuning aside). The interesting point here is there's a unique interaction between and , which effectively lets you spawn as many as 4 or rarely 5 Ancestors from at once. Farseer was actually tuned quite a bit lower than Totemic, and despite this interaction probably not being intended, this is actually a direction I hope they lean into by perhaps letting spawn more than one Ancestor at a time. Farseer feels quite a bit cooler, both in gameplay and also visually, when you're spawning a lot of together, rather than sometimes having one or maybe two active at a time.

New Raid Buff - Skyfury

New Ability: Skyfury – Harness the fury of the Windlord to grant a target ally 2% Mastery and empower their auto attacks to have a 20% chance to instantly strike again for 1 hour. If the target is in your party or raid, all affected party and raid members will be affected. Learned at level 17.

The important point here, is that gives everyone in your party or raid 2 Mastery Points, so it's the same amount of stats for everyone and it's unaffected by diminishing returns. Class Tree Changes For the Shaman class tree, we’ve reduced the node count of defense and throughput nodes to allow most of the decision making in this tree to focus on picking up different pieces of utility. There will also be some new toys to help with group utility and personal survivability.

Pathing has been improved in a variety of ways and the previously potentially restrictive locations of Gust of Wind / Spirit Walk and Earth Shield have been changed to be easier to pick up. We feel this frees up points for more compelling decisions elsewhere without having to compromise movement or defensiveness to such a large degree.The Goodmuchonly on the playersnares

If you are snared and you drop on top of the snared player, it will clear the snare.

If you are snared and you walk into it appears to clear the snare from the player

Feedback

feels awkward to path to because it's locked behind optional utility points.

should probably swap places with , because you can currently take without actually talenting .

should probably swap places with , as not every spec of Shaman needs access to .

Restoration Spec Tree Changes Restoration
Our Restoration Shaman updates condensed the availability of damage focused nodes in the specialization tree to free up more points to decide on healing profiles and moving core nodes such as Ascendance and Tidebringer into more available locations. We want Restoration Shamans to feel they have multiple compelling options to reach the heavily desirable nodes on their tree.

We’ve also focused on increasing the effectiveness of a few core Restoration Shaman spells we feel have fallen behind. The two most notable spells here are Healing Surge and Spirit Link Totem. In Healing Surge’s case players will notice more bonuses to this spell to allow players who are looking to utilize this spell more effectively and for Spirit Link, we are returning the Spouting Spirits azerite trait with a twist of splash healing to make it strong in any group content. Healing Rain is also seeing new bonuses focused on increasing its effectiveness.Season 2 2-piece bonus in DragonflightFeedback

There are currently no leading into so it feels awkward to path to. Taking into makes more sense, and feels like a worthy 2-point talent.

There's only so much use in extending the duration of which makes the 2nd point of feel weird. Opting into a bit of extra duration for only 1-point instead feels much better.

Placing below the other is fitting thematically.

procs from , so putting it closer to some of the other talents that interact with makes sense when trying to create a build.

The choice of "how would I like to add in extra AoE healing" between and is a much better choice to make, with the upside that can be used in smaller group content like Mythic+, whereas and both feel like more Raid oriented talents.

Bugs

doesn't increase healing stored by 25%

makes heal a 2nd target at 100% effectiveness, not 50%

does not increase the healing of by 30%

Healing events from remove any healing stored in

does not consume from

from consume from

About the Author
This page is maintained by Theun, Restoration Shaman for Fun Detected on Area52 (US). I've been playing the spec since Nighthold and managed to achieve up to world 4th playing for BDG in Shadowlands! I am also an MVP/theorycrafter in the Restoration Shaman specific Discord Server and Moderator in the Shaman Class Discord and am very active in both communities. For questions you can find me in the aforementioned discord servers or during my very rare streams on Twitch or babbling mindlessly on Twitter.

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