[Shaman] Do Sumfin Useful and Shrug It Off

[Caffeine]

I have a Shaman above rr40.

Issue 1
Shaman has poor AP management skills making it inferior to other healer classes.

Why is this an issue?
Shaman has two tools to manage own AP: Restorative Burst tactic and Yer Not So Bad AP drain.

In the current disrupt meta the AP drain gets disrupted too often to be reliable and so fails to serve its purpose. When facing premade groups it's often necessary (depending on the quality of enemy healers) to cover the AP drain with another dot to make it harder for enemy healers to cleanse the AP drain. If your cover dot gets disrupted you have to either keep trying to cover or drain anyway and risk it getting cleansed. Either way you will most likely burn more AP than get back from the drain. This means that at high level play Shamans AP issues get even worse.

Tweaking Yer Not So Bad is impossible without looking at disrupt rates as a whole which is a separate discussion so if we want to address Shamans AP issues specifically we have to look at Restorative Burst.

At the moment Shaman has three ways to proc Restorative Burst on RoR: Gather Round (2.5s 65AP g-heal), Bigger, Better An' Greener (2s cast 45AP st-heal) and Gork'll Fix It (1s cast 55AP st-heal). Gather Round is too slow and expensive to serve as a way to bounce back from a AP deficit. Bigger, Better An' Greener is both slow to cast and also less likely to proc RB since it's a single target heal. Gork'll Fix It is insanely expensive. In stressful situations all three fall short in helping you to proc RB forcing you to rely on double AP pots in order to function - a situation which no other healer has to face.

Solution proposal
Make Do Sumfin Useful ticks count as direct healing like it did on live.

How do you know that this is how it worked on live?
Exhibit A: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=az8HWo9 ... u.be&t=203

Around 3:26 mark WSCT shows Do Sumfin Useful critting for 738 hp and Restorative Burst proccing at the same time.

Click here to watch on YouTube

Do Sumfin Useful is specced and Restorative Burst is slotted:


Exhibit B: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mxGqw32 ... tu.be&t=33

Around 0:33 mark WSCT shows a Restorative Burst proc with no castbar

Click here to watch on YouTube

Do Sumfin Useful is specced and Restorative Burst is slotted:


Issue 2
Shrug It Off doesn't stack with tactics like Blessing of Chaos and Transferred Focus.

Why is this an issue?
Lack of synergy with other classes makes Shaman a less desirable pick. It is worth noting that Archmages Magical Infusion does stack with Runepriests Blessing of Gringni. A ticket for this issue with clear evidence has been open since March 2017 with no direct acknowledgement. In the past when it came to stacking rules the team took clear stances on what's acceptable (Wrist Slash) and what is not (Hastened Doom). It would be nice to get a confirmation and perhaps a fix for this issue in the near future.

Solution proposal
Make Shrug It Off stack with tactics that increase incoming healing.

[Azarael]

I am opening this topic.

The evidence presented is clear; Do Sumfin Useful crits triggered Restorative Burst on live.

The second issue will be fixed in the next ability patch - Blessing of Chaos incorrectly counted as a standard buff and not a tactic.

I have the following questions:

1) If HoTs do not trigger Restorative Burst in general, should we restore this functionality for one HoT or look at improving Yer Not So Bad or something else? A suggestion I had heard was reworking Pass It On to cause YNSB to boucne to nearby foes.

2) If the common statement regarding AM and Shaman is that one is mobility-weak and one is AP-weak, should we change this state of affairs rather than try to cover for it using another class's abilities?

3) Is AP on Shaman still a problem in the wake of recent improvements?

4) If likely forthcoming changes to add strikethrough stats to renown specialization are implemented, will the improved reliabilty of YNSB warrant doing nothing?

[Aurandilaz]

Nice to see this thread reopened despite the opening post containing the word "disrupt"...
Anyway, I played shaman on live (got it to rr97 before quitting in 2013 - and have one here ofc as well), and am 90% sure that my DSU did never proc RB during the years I played my git (2011-2013), if it was proccing RB during earlier years, might be very well possible, but from what I remember myself, it did not proc RB during later years. Again, WAR had many things changing over years, so OP video evidence is enough to say it did at least work that way during 2010.

1) DSU is one of the cornerstones of shaman healing, and with current age of disrupt, and ineffective AP drains, it would IMO be very well justified to have RB trigger on DSU ticks. Shaman is not the standard go-to group healer like DoK, nor the generally potent healer like zealot with their extra benefits of greater incoming heals + armor boost. Giving them this advantage would not be too much, especially when you take into account that their mirror has relatively little AP issues due to Wild Healing; shaman suffering somewhat from lack thereof. However if the AP drain becomes more effective at landing, there may not be need to alter RB to proc on DSU.
A well used AP drain can be quite punishing when used on right target, making it steal from multiple targets might be too much. Should wait and see how current AP regen changes work out and then see whether such adjustment is "okay" or way too powerful.

2) Shaman wasn't AP weak in the past when the drain worked most of time and a well positioning AM player can be quite effective kiter whilst healing decently enough. Obviously both have relative weaknesses compared to the other more group-utility focused sturdier healers. IMO, both being squishy clothie healers should be more mobile than the other healers, possibly going as far as making Shaman/AM "mobile" enough to allow them to cast both the 2s ST heal and 2.5sec gheal on move, something that would make them stand out from the rest of the healers. Or perhaps alter the existing unused tactic in their healtree whose name I cannot even remember, and make the tactic enable 2s/2.5s heals to be casted on move, with the cost of increasing said cast time by 0.5 sec.

3) Too early to tell? Not sure if this refers to mechanic stuff or yesterdays AP regen ratio.

4) If? Maybe. It's hard to comment about possible future balance altering the needs to change current balance.


Anyway, I agree with OP on both issues.

[Azarael]

Regarding move healing: The changes on RoR to I'll Take That!, Gork'll Fix It, the mechanic and Fury of Da Green (if specced) cover this.

[Telen]

1) YNSB is unreliable, gets disrupted then on top of wasting a cd and missing out on the ap you wasted the ap casting it. Having it bounce seems to extend that unreliability. Compared to a proper ap management tool like Wild Healing that doesnt need to be within range of a dps that you can reliably drain.

2) With cast on move HE and lifetaps AM isnt mobility weak. Something that is fixed by the mechanic. Shaman have to invest in tactics to make their mobility superior. AM have the superior ap management via tactics wildhealing & strike through for drain if intel spec.

3) Its better but then the recent changes also benefited AM arguably more so.

4) I doubt a healer would bother with speccing strikethrough for a single ability when lifetaps already have a tactic and ams have one that benefits all abilities

[Nameless]

The evidence presented is clear; Do Sumfin Useful crits triggered Restorative Burst on live

That is not true. I played shaman healer for quite a long time on live and dsu was never procting restorative burst. Never, cos dsu doesnt counts as direct heal while rb procs only from direct heals for all healers!
I was advocating some change to rb to count for hots since shamans are heavily hot oriented healer and.many tactics works only from direct healing and there is no synergy whatsoever but nothing happened.
But on ror the picture is different so I cant say if it is justify such change.
But I am abit confused why hots wont work with aint done yet /the do on live/ which renders that tactics quite abit

[Azarael]

HoTs do work with ADY! / Desperation. I explicitly tested this in response to a report - this has been the case ever since recalculation on tick was introduced.

The video Viny posted, I've scrutinized and I see RB procs on explicit DSU crits.

[moorfs]

Spoiler:

my account is forum banned and cant send pm's on this newly created account, hopefully the hammer will not be struck down on me even greater after posting here

Hots never did trigger RB even though the video shows RB proccing, possible the shaman is using pass it on tactic as 1 of the tactics used in the vid has the same icon as pass it on.

As for disrupt values what fixes this is the removal of the newer renown point system and replacing it with the older renown point system, something which i imagine is actually doable now with client control which imo would also help address main stat/cri stacking and put to end the rd/cw/qe discussions, also brings more depth and thought into renown speccing instead of everyone putting 20 points into deft defender then either reduce crit or dps crit.

This should fix the problem of having ap drain disrupted nearly all the time as a healer

Spoiler:

ps would still love to see ap drain changed to how it worked on live to reduce the possibility of perma no ap as the tick intervals are currently every second instead of every 3 seconds, better served as a help for am/sham than a type of hard CC imo

Please dont forget on live shaman had no ap issues due to sov ap proc bonus, gear should never be a way to balance but perma ap healing takes away from the skill involved in managing ap.

To sum it up if ap drain wasn't disrupted so much and with the lifetap reduce ap casts now a thing again (even tho i havent logged for a long time to see how this works) ap shouldn't be that much of a problem, granted shamans do have it worse than others ( am- wild healing, zeal/rp being able to cast flash heal which costs only 15 ap which heals basically the same as gork'll fix it which costs 55ap).

Spoiler:

still cant send pm's sorry to spam but if someone could give me permission that would be great and then you can all go back to forgetting i exist

[dansari]

1) YNSB is unreliable, gets disrupted then on top of wasting a cd and missing out on the ap you wasted the ap casting it. Having it bounce seems to extend that unreliability.

Idea would be to have 100% strikethrough on YNSB initial application with a chance to be disrupted on each bounce, with a chance to bounce 3-4 times giving minimal AP each time (50 over 5s or something like that). I don't disagree that Wild Healing is more reliable and requires less management than this, though, as far as 11pt tactics are concerned. The primary advantage was fixing two issues at once: making Pass it On usable and diminishing AP concerns.

[Bozzax]

1.3.2

Shaman
Bug Fixes:

Do Sumfin Useful: This ability will now fire properly at level 5 Waaagh! Also, an issue was fixed that sometimes caused this ability to act as a direct heal, rather than a heal-over-time.
Eeek!: This ability can now be properly defended against.
'Ere We Go!: Fixed a tooltip issue causing the damage description to not increase based on the player's Path of Gork mastery.
Gork's Barbs: Fixed an issue that allowed this ability to deal critical damage, and also fixed an issue that caused the ability's base damage to be too low.
Shrug it Off: The ability's tooltip has been clarified to state that the target must still be alive in order to be healed, and that only one instance of this effect may be present at a time.

Still vin is correct tho