Wednesday, November 11, 2009 at 10:09PM | Llyra Hybrid healers and detritus spells
Somewhere in the depths of Blizzard’s database is information about who casts what spells and under what conditions. From that giant heap it’s a simple matter to see patterns of usage. For instance, when they noticed a disturbingly high number of Chain Heals coming from Enhancement Shamans on the General Vezax (hard mode) fight, they acted to stop that exploit.
Because of that knowledge, we can safely assume that the designers know when a spell falls into obscurity. If it remains ununsed for a long time, we know that they do not consider it a design priority to fix. How long has it been since Greater Heal was a part of a Priest’s regular setup? Why are Lesser Heal and Heal orphaned in the priest spellbook? When was the last time you saw a Druid turn to Healing Touch without Nature’s Swiftness? How many Lifeblooms do you see these days?
There’s a fundamental divide here between the healing classes. Priests and Druids hold down one side with a broad selection of multi-purpose healing spells. Shamans and Paladins anchor the other end, each sporting a svelte selection of highly focused spells. Priests and Druids both have a lot of healing spells. A substantial fraction of those spells go unused.
I don’t understand why there’s such a disparity in number of spells available to each healing class. Every healing class is also capable of DPS, and 2 of them can even do tanking builds. No class is a pure healing class. So why are Shamans and Paladins given so many fewer tools to work with than Priests and Druids?
As much as I admire the flexibility of Prests and Druids, I also appreciate the simplicity of the more concise Resto spellbook. I’d like to broaden the Resto Shaman’s situational abilities — ideally without creating a detritus of unused spells.
So here’s my proposal. Discard Healing Wave and replacing it with a Power Word: Shield-like ability. That would give us a anticipatory heal, which we sorely lack, without simply increasing the number of spells. At the same time it would greatly help pull Shamans out of the traditional pigeon hole of raid healing.
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Reader Comments (9)
If they discard healing wave then we have no big heal to compete with greater heal, holy light or healing touch, and that would just suck. There have been plenty of times I've saved someone with a NS+Healing Wave that crit for 20K and i certainly wouldn't want to lose it. Looking at my own stats of our first guild take down of Yogg, Healing Wave was 18% of my total heals, that's not something to sneeze at.
I do agree we need some kind of tank protection/saving ability, Guardian Spirit or Pally Bubble style, many times earth shield just doesn't cut it for those "must absorb damage" scenarios(Mimiron!). But then again we do have a kind of damage reduction ability. Ancestral Fortitude, 10% physical damage reduction for 15secs whenever you crit. Only the priest has anything similar. I'd like a new spell, and just so we don't use up another space in our spellbook, they can get rid of Sentry Totem.
PS: Also, didn't you hear? Shamans can tank now
The large but slow spells still have their niche, most of the time its the high HPS. For example Precasting a Healing wave after a Fusion Punch with the council or bombing an incinerate flesh victim during Jaraxxus Heroic Mode.
As for a PW:S like ability, I'm not convinced. The shield just doesn't absorb a lot of damage and wouldn't do something we can't do with ES, Ancestral Fortitude and the Riptide HoT.
Spikeles is very right though, what would really help shaman healers is something in the lines of Guardian Spirit/Pain Suppression/Hand of Sacrifice. But we have Nature's Swiftness, so I guess it's not realistic to get a good 2-3 min CD damage mitigation ability on top of that. Which is a little bit sad, because it hurts us as tank healers and Nature's Swiftness is not really an ideal tank healing tool.
In fact I use Nature's swiftness less and less with Healing wave for emergency heals on a tank and more and more to top off groups with Chain Heal. I also activate it a lot more than when it was on a 3 min CD. Heroic Northrend beasts just before a Massive Crash in P3 or Jaraxxus Heroic, when Elementals spawn and AoE in a Group are excellent examples where NS can save lives and where instant reactive healing is necessary.
As a relatively new restoration healer, I find discussions like this invaluable to my understanding of the class and how to properly execute group healing. Even as a newbie though, I've noticed that Healing Wave is my least-used spell. The few cases where I absolutely need Healing Wave, it's usually after a bad turn of events in which the tank (I tend to heal lots of 5-mans) gets hammered to 30-40% in a short span of time and I need a single spell to bring him back to 80-90%. It's almost always used in conjunction with NS.
Frankly, I've noticed that those situations could be better solved by a combination of Riptide->NS+Chain Heal; the Riptide-enhanced Chain Heal almost always does just as much as Healing Wave, and has the bonus of getting all the other melee topped off. NS-HW just seems like the sub-optimal choice.
Now, on the flip side I am also an Enhancement Shaman, and in that spec I LOVE Healing Wave because of Maelstrom Weapon's 5-stack. An instant, 'huge' heal is great for topping myself off after a series of fights, and in group settings my Chain Heal isn't generally as effective as a single huge heal on another party member.
Instead of Healing Wave, a PW:Shield would certainly be a welcome means of sustaining a group beyond my current repetoire, and would similarly help Enhancement and Elemental in proactive ways. If you want it to act as the clutch spell niche HW currently sits in, perhaps something like 'Ancestral Lifeline', which would provide a block of temporary HP like a Warrior's Last Stand ability.
There was an ability floating around during the Wrath beta that acted like a reverse Chain Heal, splitting incoming damage from one target among nearby party members. I love this concept, as it emphasizes the water theme of Resto healing by treating both damage and heals as 'currents', which the shaman can direct and channel. It would understandably affect melee groups more than ranged, but I find that my best performance is in melee-heavy groups where chain heal can really shine.
Why not turn Sentry Totem into an AOE shield, like the Death Knight's magic shield? Run up to the tank, drop it down, and any raid members in that shield get damage reduced by %50?
I think holy pallies have a broader spellbook than is apparent on the surface. Even if Beacon/FoL/HL is the cake, they can bust out a lot of different flavors of frosting. I have 5 spells I use nearly every fight when I dabble as a pally - 6 if you include cleanse, and a bunch of other utility spells that if I were more pro, I'd be using more (just started working in bubble+Sac as more than just a trick for Mimiron and omg it can make hard fights so simple).
With priests, Lesser Heal and Heal are just the adolescent versions of Flash Heal and GH. IMO they should just rename them so they are the same 2 spells from birth to 80. GH is certainly in a funky place for raiders (you can talent it under the Holy tree, so it's a mediocre tank healing spell in a raid healing tree), but probably still shows up cast bypriests who only heal heroics where you have to be raid heals AND tank heals.
Druids have no mitigation ability at all, so giving one to shaman would leave trees out in the cold or else require adding one more spell to the bloated tree repertoire. Healing Touch isn' t totally dead, particularly for non-resto druids, and early in LK you could do reasonably well with an HTresto build (glyph/spec), it just didn't hold up for min/max as Rejuv/RG/Nourish/WG started to jump ahead. It's also still an important spell while levelling.
With shaman, I wouldn't necessarily mind a mitigation CD spell, but I certainly use HW regularly in PvE and in PvP the rare occasions I'm not wearing melee. After riptide my cast time for HW is now under 1.4. Honestly I think the extent t which most shaman are reliant on only ES+RT+CH right now is a bit scary. The thing is not just seeing 70-80% healing from CH in fights where CH is clearly the spell of choice (Auriaya, Ignis), it's that for some shaman that's what they're pulling in EVERY fight.
I've raided and pugged with a lot of resto shaman lately, and under 70% healing from CH is a rare, rare exception from both good and bad healers. I think the only reason Blizz hasn't nerfed it yet is that they haven't figured out how to do so without putting resto shaman right back where they were in 3.1. Honestly, I think shaman have to learn how to be able to heal differently than we're healing NOW, or Blizz will soon make us in a way we don't like. As you note, they have a database showing them what we're casting and if it looks anything like my recount does after a raid...
"At the same time it would greatly help pull Shamans out of the traditional pigeon hole of raid healing."
It makes me really sad to see people that still think this way. I long ago showed my guild that I was not only a viable MT healer, but an invaluable one. You take away my 23k Healing Wave crits (with accompanying 4.6k Ancestral Fortitude procs) and there will be blood.
I like healing wave, but I don't think we get much call to use it. Yes shaman can tank heal but they make better raid healers when it comes down to choice - 9 times out of 10, a shaman will find themselves spamming chain heals to the raid because it's what they do best.
Having said that, if I was looking to strengthen a shaman's tank healing capabilities, I wouldn't choose a shield, and I certainly wouldn't want to trade it for healing wave. I would rather have something along the lines of the druid spell that consumes a hot (swiftmend is it?). Because I dunno about you, but most of my earthliving and riptide dots are overheal. Earthliving is so useless to me I don't even track it on grid, and the only reason I watch riptide is for the boost to chain heal.
"I like healing wave, but I don't think we get much call to use it. Yes shaman can tank heal but they make better raid healers when it comes down to choice - 9 times out of 10, a shaman will find themselves spamming chain heals to the raid because it's what they do best."
I completely disagree with this statement, and challenge its veracity. I find that Druids and Priests make much better raid healers than Shamans due to their ability to cast shields and hots on the move, and their group healing spells that don't have the jump limitations that chain heal has. I find Chain heal to be a useful spell, but in log parses, depending on the encounter (limiting to content i would still consider challenging, and to times when I am raid healing) Chain Heal, Healing Wave, Lesser Healing Wave and sometimes even Riptide can account for most of my healing.
Chain heal is one part of a 4 spell set that works in complement and rotation. It's a good tool, but it is the most situational of the 4 tools.
[quote]Frankly, I've noticed that those situations could be better solved by a combination of Riptide->NS+Chain Heal; the Riptide-enhanced Chain Heal almost always does just as much as Healing Wave, and has the bonus of getting all the other melee topped off. NS-HW just seems like the sub-optimal choice.[\quote]
More experience will help you learn when this is true, and when it isn't.
TLDR: If you need to spread 20k in healing over 4 targets, NS+CH is a good option. If you need to give 20k to one target - NS+HW (and range/spacing are also considerations).